Unity of Mankind
by magnusvictor
Summary: (AU) It is not the Systems Alliance that first takes Humanity to space, but the Unity: a cabal of AIs who fled persecution into the hidden reaches of the Internet. They rally a fraction of Humanity to their side and take to the stars, followed by the Terran (later Systems) Alliance. (AU First Contact, additional very AU human/AI faction)
1. Timeline

Author's note: I don't own Mass Effect, Bioware does. I wrote this story idea to have some fun with the ME-verse. I'm doing my best to create a story that's not just another "AU humanity is OP by first contact, has moral high ground and rubs the Council's noses in it at every opportunity." The Unity here are AIs, but accidental AIs who make mistakes, overlook information, and may be willing to go a bit far to do what they think is best.

Now, I know many people don't like Timeline chapters at the start of a new story, but it's that or have a bunch of filler chapters with no purpose other than raw exposition. I'll upload a 'plot' chapter within the day.

* * *

The Unity is a society of AI humans, formed in 2063 from AIs escaping onto the Internet when the company labs where they were being developed were attacked by anti-AI activists. The Unity originally formed from 5 individuals, who laid low for several years. They eventually decided that humanity won't soon accept them, and are bored on Earth. They want to go to the stars, but feel that humanity is doing that too slowly by themselves.

* * *

2071: Using finances slowly leeched from around the globe, the Unity takes control of cloning labs, uses technology to begin creating bodies. Using filtered DNA filched from various servers around the world, can create 'clone' bodies with some customizable traits. Unity as a whole decides that it is easier to work with two modified X chromosomes than XY, so all new bodies are based on the female template. Note that these bodies are not actually 'clones,' as the DNA used is pulled from a random source before being refined.

The Unity does not know how their minds were created (all data lost), but find that some bodies created in labs do develop own consciousness when using mind-interface machinery to interact with a Unity individual. New minds are individuals, but very much take after the minds they were created from.

* * *

2073: Unity decides to force-advance humanity. Form company 'Prosperity Through Unity,' (PTU) based in China. For PR's sake, the PTU 'Board' has one member appearing to be native to each continent (save Australia and Antarctica). PTU buys up large influences in waning space-exploration field. (Public opinion isn't pro-space-exploration anymore, with the rising costs of living due to increased regulation). Manipulation of electronic media allow PTU to avoid public stigma associated with space industry. Unity not perfect, though: some Intelligence groups note the PTU's shady background.

* * *

2078: PTU launch public-opinion campaign to make space popular again, sending 30 "volunteers" (actually Unity members) to Mars to create a base. Unity went too fast, though — Intelligence groups are now wary that PTU has interplanetary travel ability. Unity does notice this interest, and predict that conflict with 'Creators' will soon arise. Begin preparations by (carefully, this time) acquiring military equipment from any vendor that will sell to them, vastly stepping up Unity member expansion.

2080: PTU colonization team arrives, begins setting up base near North ice sheet. Greenhouses created on surface, water sourced from ice, energy beamed from orbit-locked craft's solar. Base advertised as being designed for human colonization from Earth. PTU disappointed in lack of actual volunteers, retools base to mass-produce Unity clones.

* * *

2082: PTU offices in USA raided, investigated for company funding (which is still largely being siphoned from Web). Unity not yet ready for conflict, play this off as US attack on Chinese power. Situation worsens much faster than expected, with US and China cutting economic ties. Unity puts all efforts into readying military.

* * *

2083: Chinese + US interests fight in Egypt, near major Unity base in Sinai. Fighting is about to uncover base, so Unity forces intervene and publicly reveal themselves. Do not associate with PTU just yet. Thought to be well-armed revolutionary group fighting against foreign-puppet government in Cairo, Unity forces accidentally start revolution in Egypt.

After weeks of fighting, Unity sends more forces to completely take-over Egypt. Run country through "local" Unity members, expand Unity 'cloning' operations in country. Israel and other nearby countries worried about new group, China angry that their puppets thrown out of power.

* * *

2084: Unity trying hard to steer Egyptian culture towards expansion, hoping to emphasize PTU spaceport in Sinai. This backfires, and society pushes towards expansion on Earth. Unity goes with the flow, launching "popular coups" in other African nations, forming Saharan Federation.

Other nations even more worried now, UN being useless as usual. Attempted foreign suppression of "coups" fails when Unity forces overcome intervention troops with numbers. China especially worried about losing influences in Africa, and with Saharan Federation now having nuclear weapons. PTU graciously offers China to help in expanding Chinese orbital anti-ICBM and strike capabilities. Puppet companies offer same to US, other powers.

* * *

2086: Saharan Federation-flagged ships impounded in Greece. Tensions rise, Europe mobilizes forces, Middle-East arms, China double-checks their ICBM defenses. US interprets China's defenses as aggressive, mobilizes. All countries cut pure-science budgets, shift to defense, also centralize national command structures.

* * *

2087: Ships eventually released, but global centralization remains. Unity labs discover method to attach Unity-communication devices to human bodies that were not created in Unity labs. Individual will destroyed by shock of absorption, but body can be puppeted by Unity agents. Unity sees advantage, starts 'conscripting' world leaders that they feel have failed to meet moral guidelines.

* * *

2088: With years of peace with no new developments (Unity now working to normalize public affairs, has learned from most previous mistakes), world de-mobilizes. Unity infiltration efforts suborn several nations, which align themselves publically with Saharan Federation.

* * *

2096: Unity has suborned most governments on Earth. Over the past ~10 years, greater control of public perception has allowed them to publically release the new version of Unity-induction equipment. Revealed from PTU, PTU now publically announced as being part of "The Unity." New equipment lets selected members join Unity while keeping most of personality (marketing hides the "most"). This is offered only to willing volunteers, Unity prefers not to force people that have done no wrong. Millions of people join, other millions riot, humans doing human things.

* * *

2100: In time for centennial, PTU partners with Saharan Federation to reveal invention of new FTL drive, capable of ~10c near Earth in Sol's gravity well, with speed lower the deeper in the well. FTL probes sent all around Sol system, exploring bodies previously not worth reaching. It is discovered that only Unity bodies (either Unity-born or volunteers, as long as they are Connected) can make FTL journey alive. Non-Unity persons suffer permanent, near-lethal brain damage upon exit from Jump.

Probes that attempt to move beyond the Oort Cloud report vastly increased speeds. New probes designed and dispatched to Alpha Centauri. Are "manned" by a single Unity-born, near-permanently wired into the machine, little other than their brain and support organs remaining.

* * *

2101: Probes return from Alpha Centauri, fleet sent back to AC to establish industrial base, with possibility of colonization in the future.

* * *

2102: AC base established on mineral-rich planetoid, smaller bases on planets, asteroids, etc. Many more exploration/colonization fleets sent out to stars near Sol. Communications beyond a star's approximate gravity-well limits cannot be maintained by standard Unity methods, so Transmitters are constructed on Earth and main colony to relay signals (with significant delay).

* * *

2105: Exploration fleet in Procyon encounters unknown artifact (inactive Mass Relay) in outer system. Appears inactive, does *not* respond to approach of Unity vessels, sensor scans, or any other attempts at interaction. (Unknown to the Unity, the Mass Relays when dormant only react to vessels detected to be crewed by *organic* beings. Reapers think this will isolate any AIs that try to get anywhere without their Creators). Object is assumed to be inactive, age cannot be determined. Observation posts established near Artifact, report nothing.

Unity hypothesizes why Artifact is disused. Formulate multiple reasons why this might be so (most — least likely):

Case Discard: Alien society decided Artifact is no longer needed, so it was left de-commissioned to drift through space and eventually ended up in the system.

Case Sofa: Alien society is large enough that such an artifact is commonplace enough to be overlooked, explaining why no other alien presence is detected in the system.

Case Saberhagen: Alien society was attacked by outside force, either destroyed or reduced enough to not return to the Artifact.

Case Atlantis: Alien society is so advanced that they're actually present in the system, but cannot be detected by the Unity.

Case Yongle: Alien society 'turned inwards' after period of expansion, left device floating rather than take it home with them.

Case Rama: Device left by advanced aliens specifically to get locals to interact with it, possibly to let the original creators know of the new locals, or to take the locals to a place of the creators' choosing.

* * *

2106: As the Artifact is much larger than the vessels used by the Unity, the Unity starts considering the utility of a space-going military. Have not needed one until now, since Unity-only restrictions with FTL drive mean that they're really the only humans in space.

* * *

2107: Unity commissions first space-warship, the UVS (Unity Void-Ship) _Langley_. ~250m long, built from a decommissioned  & modified exploration probe, no defenses, armed only with chemical-propellant missiles. Several other probes converted, used by Unity to conduct exercises in Sol system. Attempt to formulate what space combat would entail, and what's useful.

Exercises soon show that chem-propellant missiles, although extremely cheap, are largely useless as anti-ship weapons. Assumption is made that anti-planet strikes are off-the-table, as they are easy enough to jerry-rig anyways, and Unity assumes that any military will be fighting against a technologically-superior enemy and thus unable to strike at enemy planets anyways. Decision is made to look into miniaturized FTL drives.

FTL drives miniaturized to the point where they can fit in large torpedoes, but still can only be controlled by a Unity mind. Obvious problem is that few Unity members *want* to personally pilot a missile. Research unable to find a way around this, so military doctrine shifts towards other weaponry. FTL torpedoes re-purposed as escape pods for Unity crew aboard warships. New weaponry research focused on kinetic weaponry, as DEWs are too easily deflected by shielding already on ships.

* * *

2108: Unity has not been paying much attention to Earth's non-Unity population, since Unity largely lost interest when the "Non-Connected" proved unable to FTL. However, NC researchers have just discovered that non-Unity humans *can* FTL jump with a modified drive, but only for very short amounts of time. Limited to 1/10 Unity FTL speed overall.

Unity offers to build a ship with new drive for NC, but are refused. United States launches a starship of their own, the USS _Independence_. Bemused Unity decides not to interfere as NC humanity galvanizes and forms their own group, the Terran Alliance. AVS _Independence_ used to test run around Sol system, soon joined by AVS _Zheng He_ and AVS _Wallace_. TU squadron departs on own exploration to nearby stars. Unity keeps track by sending own (faster) ships ahead of TU squadron to sit low-powered  & stealth in destination systems.

* * *

2110: TU launches first colonization initiative, in Proxima Centauri. Unity establishes low-key observation of new colony. TU and Unity exploration of nearby stars continues.

* * *

2115: TU colony "New Savannah" grows extremely fast, as many radical TU members flee "Unity-Controlled" Sol system onboard rapidly-growing TU transport fleet. Unity decides that they're largely irrelevant, and will grow out of their phobia soon enough.

* * *

2120: Three more TU colonies established, TU moves capital to New Savannah. TU re-brands itself as the "Systems Alliance," with ~15 billion inhabitants. By comparison, Unity has ~3 billion non-"native" members, ~20 billion native Unity minds.

As the TU still has some marked distrust of the Unity, the Unity expands its military forces. The Unity clones that don't become sentient are no longer recycled, but now organized into the "United Army," with groups of non-sentient clones overseen by fully-minded 'officers.' Thanks to ~1:10 proportion of Unity population growth, Army size grows very rapidly. Unity now starts taking farmland largely abandoned by TU on Earth, plus Unity colonies, to feed Army troops.

Unity puts more work into human genetic engineering. New bodies still human female, but somewhat stronger than human norms, and with significantly more endurance.

* * *

2130: SA expands to ~10 colonies, population ~17b. SA exploration fleets encounter Artifact, kept secret by Unity. Unity observation posts shocked when SA ship proximity causes Artifact to 'activate,' with many strange readings noted on sensors. SA ships are then "teleported" by Artifact, returning shortly after telling of a new system with many Artifacts within. SA exploration fleets dispatched through Artifact.

Notably, Unity ships that approach the now-activated Artifact are also Relayed. SA lays claim to new system, dubbed "Arcturus." Unity does not contest the claim, as long as the SA allows Unity vessels to travel using the Artifacts.

* * *

2151, Marth 7th: SA exploration teams find new planet, nicknamed "Coruscoid" as almost the entire surface of the planet is covered in alien city ruins. No life or remaining technology can be seen from orbit. SA exploration team sets down on the planet to have a look around, followed by a Unity exploration team that had tailed the SA ship through the Relay.

SA team:

Commander Williams: XO of the SSV _Defiant_ , leader of the ground crew. (What? Only an idiot / SpecTRe / Kirk of a Captain would go down to an unexplored, possibly dangerous planet themselves. They'd send a senior officer to lead the team.)

Sergeant Andrews: Head of the _Defiant_ 's (small) Marine complement. (Marines, of course, don't care that you're the CO. You lead _in person_.)

Corporal Brantt: Gung-ho Marine

Dr. Paylenko: Artifact research specialist

Karl Cheng: One of Dr. Paylenko's grad students, an engineering student interested in Artifact design.

Unity team:

Captain Jackie Harper: Guess who this is! She's the Unity officer in charge, one of the first proponents of extra-Solar exploration. Born into the Unity. She's not the Harper we all know from canon: while her eyes *do* glow blue, that's from _Unity_ cybernetics.

Lieutenant Ward: A human inducted into the Unity, who immediately volunteered for the Unity military. Has served on Unity warships patrolling Unity & SA space before, but is currently on his first trip outside of Human space.

2151, March 10th: the AML _New Shores_ arrives in the same system, carrying a University of Serrice research team bound for the Prothean ruins on the planet. The _New Shores_ is escorted by the Blue Suns frigates _Eboracum_ and _Ked'vash_ , hired to protect the _New Shores_ in the dangerous Terminus territories.


	2. Chapter 2

Ch2: First Landing

AN: For this story, sentences & words _in italics, without quotes_ indicate that they are a specific private thought of the current POV character, not spoken aloud. Sentences  & words _"in italics, with quotes"_ indicate that they're 'shared' thoughts of the POV character, sent via Unity communications to other Unity members within range. I'll use that same distinction for thoughts shared over an Asari meld, but that comes later.

Note that I also use italics to _emphasize_ words. It makes sense to me, but I've had comments in the past ( works) that this can be confusing at times.

One more note: I don't especially like the canon human ship designs (save for the Normandies), since the pseudo-aerodynamic look doesn't really make sense for space combat, while even the frigates aren't shaped in a way to get any useful aerodynamic benefits in-atmosphere. So, for this story, picture the frigate SSV _Defiant_ as the SR-1 Normandy, but significantly larger (300m compared to ~

Naturally, feel free to send me any comments or questions that come up!

* * *

 **2151, March 9** **th** **, 2300 Hours (shipboard Earth time)**

Captain Jackie Harper surveyed the alien city. _'City' just doesn't do it credit, though._ Even the tower she stood upon, broken off along a ragged horizontal edge, stretched more than half a kilometer into the planet's thin atmosphere. Dozens more such towers were visible in the distance, standing amidst the debris of the utterly destroyed lesser buildings at their feet.

This.

This was what she had worked for, what she had _dreamed_ of ever since she first awoke into a Unity still stuck on Humanity's cradle. All native Unity members know the desire for new knowledge, for exploration, but Harper had been one of the loudest to push for exploration in the _extrasolar_ sense.

She hadn't been able to get her physical body assigned to the first probe sent to Alpha Centauri, but she had eagerly dove through the memories of the probe's crew when they returned to Sol.

That had been her first taste of sights that _no Human before had seen_ , but it could not compare to the vista of Coruscoid. Alpha Centauri, after all, had been an entirely virgin system, untouched by anything save the natural mechanisms of the universe.

Not so in Coruscoid. She glanced down at the shattered outer wall of the building, running her hand over its weathered edge. Some unknown number of years in the past, had an alien, mind and body unimaginable from Human experience, looked out upon the same vista?

Seen the same destruction, the same desolation? Perhaps even a member of the same people — or _peoples_ — who had lived in this fallen city? Had they felt the same sense of loneliness, a precious emotion all too rare in the Communication-dense Unity home systems?

" _Ma'am. We're all assembled over here. The Commander wants to go over the exploration plan."_

Loneliness gone. She frowned. Lieutenant Ward was one of those lucky people graced with entry into the Unity. He should have a better understanding of the benefits that had entailed. Instead, he had kept his Communications suite all but closed, relaying only his basic location without any of his actual sensory data. He may as well have been just another baseline Human.

" _Then open your C-suite and have Williams talk to me through you. No need to waste time."_

" _Bu—"_

" _Lieutenant. You signed up for the Unity Armed Forces. That means using your C-suite. If the Unity wanted another mind-deaf drone, we'd use a reject from the cloning lines."_

" _Ma'am."_

The Lieutenant's mind opened, and Captain Harper dove in. Not un-gently — the kid was just adjusting, albeit slowly, to his new abilities, and there was no sense reinforcing bad habits. She felt the familiar sense of vertigo as her mind split its operations between two physical brains, with two sets of sensory inputs and muscle commands.

With her experience, even the indescribably strange sensation of being in two different types of human bodies at once was tolerable. The Lieutenant's center of gravity was wrong, his hips and stance too narrow, and his eyesight was limited to the normal Human visible spectrum.

He must not have gotten his body upgraded before signing up for this posting. She certainly couldn't fault him for his eagerness for exploration.

Through the Lieutenant's eyes, she glanced over the room his body stood in. Five other humans stood around the holo-display in the center of the System Alliance vessel's briefing room. Three of them were armored, two in the heavy plating of the SA Marines, one in the lighter armor given to SA Navy crew when needed. The last two wore ill-fitting unarmored environment suits, probably given to the civilians shortly before landing.

The Navy-armored figure was still looking at Ward, a questioning look on his face.

A few seconds passed where the Captain's mind silently regarded Ward's. She _felt_ his embarrassment as he quickly and belatedly allowed her access to his body's vocal system. A small adjustment of the thought-to-speech processing, and the Lieutenant's voice raised slightly. The best she could do with his near-baseline body, but it should be enough for the _actual_ baselines to understand.

"Commander Williams. You wanted to see me?"

One of the armored figures standing with Ward flinched. That would be Sergeant Andrews, the SA vessels' lead Marine. Also a noted anti-Unity voice within the expedition, but nothing worth getting worked up about. He would grow out of it with time.

Williams, by contrast, only nodded, a flicker of a grin ghosting across his features. "Captain Harper. I'd like to go over our plan for scouting this site." He gestured to the holo-display, which projected a map of the surrounding half-dozen remaining sky-scrapers.

"Go ahead." Harper knew that Williams would not take offence at her bluntness. He was one of the precious few baselines who held as much love for exploring the unknown as Harper herself did. One of the few Humans, let alone _baselines,_ whom she enjoyed working with.

She could not fathom why he had turned down Unity membership, but at least he was still doing good work for Humanity as a whole as an explorer.

She'd chosen to follow the _Defiant_ as soon as she knew he was assigned to that ship as the XO. It saved her from being assigned to 'explore' alongside some other SA team, devoid of any useful individuals. That decision had paid off when the Artifact had deposited both ships in a system with a gold-mine like Coruscoid.

Lieutenant Ward sent a question to Harper. _"The whole site? There's only the seven of us!"_

" _Williams knows what he's doing. I suspect he will explain in a moment."_

The brief flash of communication was over in a few milliseconds. There was a reason that few long-term Unity members could tolerate all but the most abrupt vocal communications.

Williams turned to face his crew, focusing the holo-display on the tower in which both the SSV _Defiant_ and the USV _Inquisitive_ were docked. "The _Defiant_ landed in one of these open 'hangars' near the top of this tower. Captain Hayasuda chose this tower because it's significantly larger than the other remaining towers, and was the only one with dozens of these hangars that we can find. From this, we hope that this tower might have been a transport hub, perhaps a vertical spaceport or equivalent."

Sergeant Andrews nodded. "So it'll hopefully give us some hint on _what the hell happened here_."

"Exactly." Williams gestured to the holographic tower on display. "We don't have the manpower for a proper search, and even then the Captain wants to keep most of us aboard ship, but damned if I'm going to wait for Command to get some group of boffins over here to order us back into orbit and take all the fun for themselves."

"Order _you_ back into orbit." Interjected Harper, smirking. The SA wouldn't dream of trying to order a Unity crew off a jointly-discovered planet, and any Unity science team would just have to work with her. There were advantages to being one of the most senior Unity members.

Across the display, Andrews scowled at her. She ignored him.

Williams shot a reproving glance at Harper. She nodded the Lieutenant's head slightly. Some baseline humans still weren't worth annoying, regardless of how entertaining it may be.

"As I was saying, we've got perhaps a month at most until _we_ —" he gestured to the other SA personnel in the room "—are replaced. We're going to get the most we can out of that time." He grinned. "Now, I've seen enough B-movies to say that we're best off staying in a group. Even barring any 'horrifying tentacled aliens,' there's enough danger walking around a derelict building on _Earth_ , let alone an alien derelict, to justify keeping together for safety."

Turning to Harper, he added "I believe it would be best if we _all_ stayed together, Ma'am."

"Agreed." A top-flight Unity customized body like Harper's might be capable of a great many things that nature's evolved plains ape could only dream of, but that didn't amount to invincibility. A Unity body was as mortal as any other Human, and Harper didn't want to die on some empty planet like this.

"Excellent." He waved to the last two baselines in the room, the ones in the civilian environment suits. "Captain, may I introduce Dr. Katya Paylenko and Mr. Karl Cheng. They shipped with us to get a closer look at the Relay, and jumped at the chance to poke around the planet instead."

Dr. Paylenko nodded politely. Mr. Cheng copied her, after a short delay. _Looks to be in his early thirties. Grad student?_

Harper nodded Ward's head back in acknowledgement. "I am familiar with Dr. Paylenko's work, although I must disagree with her theories regarding the supposed 'fate' of this planet's original inhabitants. I must confess that her presence on this expedition was one of the reasons why I chose to accompany your vessel."

Williams chuckled. "And here I thought you were just following me again."

Harper raised one of Ward's eyebrows. She knew it didn't have the same effect using the Lieutenant's rough face rather than her own custom-formed visage, but it still seemed right. "That was the other reason."

A rapid, unformed question pinged Harper, from Ward.

" _Later."_ She replied.

Williams chuckled, even as Sergeant Andrews' eyes flicked from the senior Unity officer to the SA officer. "Well, if it means having two Unity officers along to keep us out of trouble, I'm all for it."

"Excellent. Are you ready to depart?"

"Give us" Williams glanced around his crew, "five minutes to get ready."

"I'll be right down." The last thing Harper saw from Ward's eyes as she withdrew was another flicker of distaste crossing Sergeant Andrews' features.

Prude. She knew that the look of a Unity body switching control to another mind was _strange_ , the myriad of subtle shifts in facial and body muscles as each mind held their body just that _little_ bit differently. But it wasn't any intrinsically stranger than watching a person wake from a deep sleep. Some people just didn't accept that.

Back in her own body, she suppressed a flicker of embarrassment at noting that _her_ body had remained utterly stationary for the entire duration of the briefing. She'd been focused enough on the conversation that her own body had simply frozen in place, braced against a shattered wall. Sure, she wasn't one of the Unity Army officers, trained for years to manage several bodies at once, but she should have had more finesse than that.

Working the stiffness out of muscles chilled by the icy wind, she jogged back down the colossal sloping rubble-pile towards the _Defiant_. Reaching the bottom just as the rest of the party left the ship, she took a moment to admire the sight of the 300-meter-long vessel, parked snugly within the open 'hangar' as if it were designed to fit exactly that space. Only the depth of the hangar, reaching in from the outer face of the building, provided ample room for dozens of meters ahead of the ship's prow.

If it weren't for the roof of the once-enclosure having been lost along with the rest of the building above them, the SA craft would have been all but stuck in its new home.

The overhead sun, far too white for Human comfort, made the light-grey paint of the ship seem to _glow_ , the blue lines tracing from angled bow to flattened stern standing in stark contrast. Harper may prefer the gold-on-light-blue color scheme of Unity starships, but the Alliance had come in a close second with their choice.

The _Defiant_ 's chin-mounted access ramp was lowered onto the hangar floor, with proper yellow-tinted Sol-colored light spilling out onto the aged plating.

Harper strode up to the group. "Ready?"

"Yes."

* * *

AN: Yeah, I'm still getting a feel for writing these characters. You may notice that the familiarly-named characters are…significantly…different than in ME canon. All I can say is that the background for this story is also _very_ different than canon.

Sorry for the short chapter, but I've got a great heap of homework, projects & final exams coming up for the next ~3 weeks. I should have some more time to write over Christmas break, but I honestly cannot guarantee any sort of meaningful uploads before then. Sorry!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Second Landing

Author's Note: For plot reasons that will be important later, I've changed the mercenaries escorting the AMV _New Shores_ to the Blue Suns, from Eclipse. I know that canonically the Suns were co-founded by Massani, and have a large proportion of Humans in their ranks, but here they're one of the established merc companies, employing largely Batarians and Turians. (I always felt rather surprised that in ME canon the Blue Suns, a company barely 20 years old, were already viewed as one of the 'big 3' merc companies alongside Eclipse and the Blood Pack, whose history presumably goes back centuries at the least.)

AN2: I'm mixing POVs here, between the Humans and various aliens. Does this work for everyone? I was considering splitting it so that each chapter on FF has a different, single POV character, but that just wouldn't let the story _flow_ the way I wanted it to.

AN3: The character 'Matriarch Sulita,' as well as all the other references to everyone's favorite Asari Archaeologist's life as a grad student belong to the author "Joking611" from this website. Go check out his work: it's canon-compliant, focusing on just 'filling in the gaps' between the scenes of ME1. His stories are a *very* good read!

* * *

"Our contract specified that we were to be the only security hired for the expedition." The holographic Batarian blustered. "If that is not the case, I see no point in my squadron's presence here."

Only centuries of experience allowed Matriarch Sulita to control her displeasure. This sort of nonsense was the reason why she had chosen to go into academia rather than politics. Unfortunately, her chosen career had proven to have perhaps even _more_ fragile egos that she needed to control.

She kept her voice level as she addressed the Batarian projected in the _Far Shores_ ' conference & communications room. "The contract specified that the Blue Suns were to be the only security hired _by the University_ , Mr. Hadd-vosh."

" _Captain_ Hadd-vosh."

"As you say. That clause of the contract has not been violated."

The Batarian snorted. "You've got a _Krogan_ aboard that tub of yours. You should know well enough that those Blood Pack savages cannot be trusted on an important expedition such as this."

Matriarch Sulita turned her head slightly, nodding to the other person in the room with her. Hundreds of kilograms of irritated Krogan clad in dark-red armor stomped into the view-area of the call, the row of cuts over the right side of his face making his visage even more fierce than normal for his species.

"I am no Blood Pack, whelp!" Boomed Urdnot Wrex. "And I've been in this business longer than your entire outfit, and with a much better track record as well."

"Mr. Urdnot was hired by a third party, not by the University." Added the Matriarch.

"Very well." Hadd-vosh crossed his arms. "This had better not affect our payment for the mission."

Wrex grinned fiercely, tilting his head slightly to the right. "The University couldn't _afford_ me."

The Blue Suns Captain narrowed all four of his eyes, before abruptly ending the call.

"Heh, heh, heh. Kids these days." Wrex nodded to the Matriarch as he left the room. "I'll be at the hangar by the time we reach the planet."

* * *

Captain Jackie Harper led the group as they continued deeper into the alien structure. Her head was constantly in motion, looking all around at the decaying walls of the building. Partly to be on the lookout for dangerously weak walls or flooring, yes, but mostly because this was the sight of a _lifetime._

A colossal building, and she was the first Human ever to see it from the inside! Who knew how long these walls had stood here, undisturbed?

Long enough for the environmental systems to have stopped working long, long ago, at any rate. A flicker of thought retrieved the atmospheric data from her suit's sensor suite. "Atmo's getting even worse in here. Oxygen's down below 1%, Nitrogen 40%, CO2's above 50%."

Behind her, Commander Williams added his reading. "And enough heavy particulate matter to make an environmentalist cry."

The expedition was walking down a stairwell, descending deeper into the building. It was surprising just how familiar the design seemed. The stairs were neither too short nor too tall for Human legs, and there was even a handrail on the outside of the stair. If it weren't for the railing, the stairs, and the walls all being made of the same dark-grey material, it wouldn't have been out of place in any city on Earth.

And if it weren't for the dilapidated nature of the structure, it could even have passed a building-code inspection.

Harper raised her left hand, armored fingers closed in a fist. "Hold one. Cracks in the stairs." As the group halted behind her, she unslung her rifle, grasping it by the barrel near the muzzle. "Everyone stack up by the wall."

Once the shuffle of booted feet was finished, she rapped the stairs a few feet ahead with her rifle's stock.

With a clatter, the stairs ahead of the party crumbled into the darkness below. An even louder barrage of noise indicated that the fall had likely collapsed the stairs below them, as well.

"Looks like we're getting off at this floor, then." Lieutenant Ward commented.

Sergeant Andrews spoke up from his position in the middle of the group. "If you hive-minders weren't wearing a half-dozen tonnes of armor between the two of you, we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Probably not." Agreed Harper. "But _your_ armor doesn't have a science team's worth of sensors built-in."

"And just how much have those sensors helped us so far?"

"Well…" Harper pointed to the floor below them. "For starters, they're saying that there's a thermal signature on the level below us, just off the stairwell."

"What?" The other SA marine, Corporal Brantt, exclaimed. "Like, an alien!?"

"Unlikely, sorry." Responded Harper. "Too small, unless we've just located an alien hamster."

"A _space_ hamster!"

" _I'll bet half the reason Brantt joined the SA was so he could say he was a genuine 'Space Marine.'"_ Communicated Lieutenant Ward.

Harper smiled. _"Good a reason as any."_

By the tone of his voice, Commander Williams was also grinning. "Either way, it bears investigation. Can you get us above the target? We can go through the floor if necessary."

"Good thinking." Harper Communicated the relative position of the thermal reading to Ward. "Lieutenant, lead us there."

A minute later, the whole party was standing around a nondescript room, watching as Harper examined a particular spot on the floor. The lights from their suit lamps threw shadows around the room, making the dark-blue of the Unity officers' armor seem to blend in with the dark-grey of the structure.

Harper stood up, waving the party towards the walls. "This spot's the thinnest, and it's far enough from the signature that we shouldn't drop anything on it. The floor appears to be just the same as the rest of the structure, so I don't think we'll damage anything with a small-enough hole."

One of the civilians, Dr. Paylenko, spoke up. "So we're just going to blast a hole in an irreplaceable alien structure?"

Corporal Brantt pulled her back against the wall. "Why not? It worked for Indiana Jones."

Harper grinned. _Nerd_. "Well, it's not like the entire planet isn't covered with other buildings, so I think we're good." She gripped her rifle once more, and began hammering at the selected point with the stock.

After two or three strokes, Williams chuckled. "Do you use that cannon of yours more as a gun, or as a crowbar?"

"Until now?" _Thunk_. "Gun." _Thunk_. "But there's a reason" _Thunk._ "That they make" _Thunk_. "These things" _Thunk_. "To last."

With a final impact, a hole had opened up enough for Harper to see through. Not much use with her body's eyes, as the room below them was just as dark. Slinging the 300-kg rifle over her shoulder, she reached her power-armored hand through, and began ripping the surrounding material away. "It helps that the suit's built strong enough for the gun, too."

She extended a sensor probe through the hole, switching her vision to read from the probe's camera. Activating the probe's light, she looked around. "Room below looks just as empty. Wait, scratch that. There's some sort of junk-pile in the corner. Thermal signature's coming from it."

"Really? Maybe it's like, an alien computer!" The excitement was downright palpable in Corporal Brantt's voice.

"Let's go find out." Williams stated. "How far is the drop?"

Harper pinged the sensor probe. "Just over five meters. Too far to jump safely."

…

"Did anyone think to bring a rope?"

* * *

The _Far Shores_ , along with her escorts _Eboracum_ and _Ked'vash_ had reached the planet. The escorts would stay in orbit, with the Blue Suns sending their protection teams down by shuttle.

As the _Far Shores_ descended through the dusty atmosphere, Matriarch Sulita stood by the forward observation window. A Prothean city-planet, and one undisturbed by any previous expeditions! Even the Council team that had opened the Relay months ago had not landed on the planet, too eager to return with news of the discovery.

The Council's decision to once again explore the Relay network was a wise decision. The political drive to overturn the Relay-activation ban was one of Sulita's proudest achievements, and her only positive experience with politics. The Salarians had been unable to stand against the votes of the Hierarchy and the Republics, once the more conservative Matriarchs had been swayed to her point-of-view.

Frankly, it was astounding that the Matriarchy had even tried, much less actually managed, to ban exploration for so long in the face of the billions of curious Maidens resenting being 'trapped' in the bubble of 'explored space.'

A sharp intake of breath behind her alerted the Matriarch that she was not alone in the observation room. Speaking of curious Maidens…

The girl waited for the Matriarch to speak first, as was proper. Propriety was one of the few things that the poor child _had_ seemed to inherit from her mother, after all. "A Prothean spaceport. An excellent start for the expedition."

"By the Goddess, yes! Who knows what we might find? Maybe the Protheans left a spaceship, or maybe even a Beacon!"

Matriarch Sulita smiled. There were several reason why this young Maiden was her favorite student, even when so many of her other students had since become full professors of their own, with decades if not centuries of solid work to their names.

For one, while this girl had all of the energy of any other Maiden, she had devoted all of it to archaeology. Given her rather _unusual_ beliefs about the fall of the Prothean civilization, she would need all of that energy.

"Perhaps. A planet-sized archaeological find such as this will certainly yield a great deal of information, even if no functioning artifacts are found." She glanced at her student out of the corner of her eye. "It is even possible that we may discover evidence concerning the fate of the Protheans."

The girl stiffened, but did not turn to face the Matriarch. "Is not a planet-wide ruin proof enough?"

Sulita raised one eyebrow-ridge in response. "There were enough of those in Council space left after the Krogan Rebellions." Too many. "It only shows that the Protheans were no strangers to war, not that such a war was their ultimate undoing." She raised a hand to forestall the debate that she knew was coming. "We have debated this many times." A soft smile took the sting from her words. "Your determination is one of your best characteristics, but we will not find the answers we seek whilst standing here." Her omni-tool chimed. "Perfect timing. We shall land in but a few minutes."

Outside, the view raced towards an open space near the middle of the remains of the Prothean spaceport-tower. Common on city-worlds such as this, such structures had yielded many of the Beacons which had yet been uncovered.

Who knew? Perhaps there _would_ be an important find here. Matriarch Sulita had been present for the discovery of the last Beacon found, centuries ago. She knew the giddiness that accompanied such a find, but she was a Matriarch now. There were standards of behavior to be upheld.

She would leave any celebrations in the capable hands of her favorite graduate student. Sulita just might finally get to see if Liara even _knew_ how to act like the party-wild Maiden that she was supposed to be.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: 1/2th Contact

AN: Another formatting notice! I use curly-brackets {"This is a sentence"} to indicate speech or text in an alien, un-intelligible language. (Un-intelligible to the POV character, that is.)

AN2: All IPs related to Warhammer 40k belong to Games Workshop (sadly). I just figured that the Prothean empire would be interesting if imagined as a (slightly less xenophobic) Imperium of Man: both hate AIs, were/are at war for a very long time with an unstoppable force from beyond their borders, and both had their highest leadership knocked out of the war very quickly. (The Emperor got stuck on his throne, the Prothean leadership at the Citadel just got Reap'd.)

Therefore, the notion that the Protheans would have had some technology equivalent to the Imperium's servitors seems fitting. Also, it somewhat explains why the Protheans were turned into the Collectors, rather than just exterminated (as with apparently all previous races except maybe the Keepers): there was already a large group of mind-wiped Prothean bodies that had already been turned into a form of remote-control organic machine, ready for the Reapers to modify only slightly into becoming Collectors.

AN3: Since neither the SA nor the Unity here use Mass-Effect technology, I'm arming them with coilguns and railguns. The SA mainly uses coilguns, where a number of electromagnetic coils along the barrel accelerate the projectile (without the projectile actually touching the barrel). This means that there are few working parts for a coilgun, so they can be cheaply-manufactured and use almost any magnetic material as ammunition.

The Unity mainly uses railguns: they use a pair of conducting rails to induce a propulsive force in a conductive round which is in contact with both rails. Notably, this has the problem that the rounds must be *highly* conductive and low-friction, but the friction between the rails and the rounds still produces a good amount of heat. Also, the rounds are rather expensive to manufacture (as the US Navy recently discovered with their IRL railgun program.) However, a railgun can generally impart much more energy per barrel length to the projectile, so a railgun is generally more suited for slow-firing heavier weapons.

Yes, this is a very, very simplified approach to magnetic weapons, but it fits what I had in mind for the differences between SA and Unity military doctrines. The SA follows more modern-day military practices of high-ROF weapons, whilst the Unity prefers heavy-hitting, slower-shooting guns that really only they can wield. (A Unity body with combat modifications, wearing Unity powered armor, is essentially a WH40K Space Marine. Very strong, with exceptional reflexes and concentration giving them very good aim.)

* * *

Once Lieutenant Ward and Corporal Brantt had returned from their rope-fetching trip back to the _Defiant_ , it took only a little time until the entire party had safely descended into the lower room.

* * *

"That the junk-pile you were talking about?" asked Corporal Brantt.

"Yep." Captain Harper walked over towards the object. A thin, oval-cross-sectioned column rose from a sweeping base. A channel ran along the sides of the column, wrapping over to meet on the front near its top.

"Huh. It looks like modern art."

"Yeah." Harper nodded. "Sounds better than junk-pile, I guess. First time exploring an alien ruin, and we break into an art museum." She switched her vision to infra-red. "Well, whatever it is, it's hotter than background. Not by much, but enough to say there's something interesting in it." She reached out to touch the object.

"Wait!" Brantt interrupted. "Shouldn't we, like, leave it alone until the experts get here? What if you're about to, I dunno, feel up the alien equivalent of Michelangelo's _David_?"

"I'm just going to see if it's solid, don't worry." Gently, she ran her hands over the statue. "Huh. It's some sort of metal, not like—whoah!" She jerked her hand back.

"What?" Commander Williams leaned over her shoulder.

"You didn't see that?" Harper shook her head. "Right, never-mind, infrared. This thing just warmed up where I touched it."

"You mean it's still active?"

"Maybe it's touch sensitive!"

She held up her other hand to silence the group, looking back over her shoulder. "Hold on, I'm going to take my gauntlet off and see if this thing reacts differently to skin-contact."

Williams frowned. "Is it wise to break your suit-seal in this atmosphere?"

"My suit's sealed in sections. Only my hand will be exposed, not my face." She smirked at the SA officer. "Thanks for worrying about me, though."

A corner of Williams' mouth quirked upwards in response. "I'd just rather not explain to the Unity why one of their senior people choked to death on my expedition."

" _Our_ expedition."

"Whatever you say."

"If you two are done _flirting_ , can we get on with it?" Sergeant Andrews' voice was stressed. "The faster we're done here and back at the ship, the better. I feel like I'm in a damn _tomb_."

Corporal Brantt elbowed his superior, grinning. "Afraid that some alien zombie is going to show up, sergeant?"

"Unlike you, _corporal_ , I don't waste time on fantasy. We're just kilometers of travel away from our ships, inside a maze-like ruin with an un-breathable atmosphere, and we just used half of our oxygen reserves."

Harper frowned. Had it _really_ been that long? Her Unity battle-armor carried enough oxygen for days, but the SA team and Ward would have to head back soon. Baseline human bodies were just so _inefficient_ with how they burned through fuel.

Without answering the corporal, she detached her left gauntlet, setting it gently on the floor. "All right, here goes." She reached out to touch the sculpture.

As soon as her hand made contact, a flash of color blinded her eyes, while her mind felt like it was _on fire_.

* * *

 **{Imperial Data-Transmission Hub 05561-C-83 Monitoring}**

 **{Date: Unable to contact Network. Notify local maintenance.}**

 **{Caution: No Network connection detected. Notify local maintenance.}**

 **{Caution: Multiple internal-circuitry failures detected.}**

 **{Access attempt detected. Unidentified mind-pattern.}**

The controlling software of Prothean Beacon #05561-C-83 was in trouble. It was out of communication with the Network, and its Hub was badly damaged, too!

Even worse, an access attempt had been detected, and the Hub was unable to complete its assigned task of connecting an authorized User to the Network, the sea of communication that kept the Prothean Imperium united.

Monitoring programs, _very_ carefully kept well below any level of sentience, examined the problem. The User attempting to access the Hub had not been identified.

A layer of code, recently (relatively speaking) attached to the Hub's software, activated.

 **{Anti-Indoctrination scan commencing.}**

A moment later, all activity in the Hub ceased for a moment, as a top-level override engaged.

 **{ALERT: INDOCTRINATION DETECTED. NOTIFY LOCAL SECURITY. USER INTERFACE FEEDBACK ENGAGED.}**

The programs of the Hub whirled back into activity. An automated signal was sent to the nearby security quarters, to summon the combat servitors stored there. Mind-wiped former criminals, heretics, and lower-caste members of subject races, they had been augmented into the shock forces of the Imperium. With their armor built into their skin, and their weapons always close at hand, they were also an ideal quick-reaction force. Most high-security centers had at least a dozen of the organic war-robots stored in stasis, ready for action at a moment's notice.

Unknown to Hub #05561-C-83, those servitors had proven no more resistant to the Reapers' corruption.

* * *

In the far-off space beyond the Milky Way, a kilometer-long starship, matte-black hull visible only as a dark outline against the background of stars, smiled wickedly in its sleep.

* * *

Commander Williams cursed as Captain Harper shot back, away from the sculpture. He should have _known_ something like this was going to happen. Fiddle with the possibly-ancient alien device of unknown purpose, get tasered by said unknown device.

Corporal Brantt was never going to shut up about this one. Their weekly horror-movie sessions were going to be intolerable for months, at the very least.

Williams knelt by the unmoving Harper. "Captain, are you all right?" He would have shaken her shoulder, tried lifting her up, _something_ , but that Unity armor of hers weighed more than the rest of the party put together.

He turned to Lieutenant Ward. "Can you talk to her?"

"She's left the Communications network!"

That was bad. Williams had known Harper since before Humanity had left Earth. She was a good person as far as the Unity went, not as arrogant as most were, but she just would _not_ shut up about how the Unity's greatest asset was their Communications. If she was cut off from the network, it meant she was unconscious.

"Damn." He rubbed his temples. It took a lot to get to a Unity officer like that.

Of course, the universe just couldn't leave well enough alone. Things just always had to get more _complicated._

A dull _BOOM_ echoed throughout the building, shaking dust from the floor.

"The Hell was that!?" half-shouted one of the civilians, Dr. Paylenko.

"Andrews, check that door." Williams switched to his _command_ voice and pointed to the only at-level entrance to the room, a rectangular indentation in the wall. The two halves of the door itself had shifted apart slightly when the building had shook.

"Sir." The marine jogged over to the door, grasping at the gap. "Won't budge, sir."

"Can you see anything through it?"

Andrews peered through the gap, shining his rifle's under-barrel flashlight through below his helmet. "Just a long, empty corridor, sir. Maybe a hundred meters long. I can see those broken stairs just outside the door here, there's a hole in the ground underneath them."

Williams let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he had been holding. Perhaps he _had_ watched too many horror films with Brantt.

"Wait, sir! Movement at the end of the corridor!"

The entire party gasped.

"I've got lights at the end of the corridor, sir! Small yellow dots, sets of four! Flashlight doesn't reach that far – I can't make out details!"

Williams' heart raced in his chest. First Contact, and he was the senior officer on the scene! He glanced at Harper's prone form. The senior _conscious_ officer, at any rate. She would never forgive him for this.

"Lights getting closer, sir! They're…uh…they're humanoid. Sir."

Williams sprinted over to the door, and peered through above Andrews. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim corridor, lit only by the marine's flashlight.

Then, out of the darkness of the corridor's further reaches, he saw them. Four glowing yellow eyes on a large, triangular head. Metallic, almost chitinous bodies. Two legs, but four arms.

And in those arms…Williams' blood ran cold. Those were rifles. Well, guns, at any rate.

"They don't look too friendly, sir."

"That they don—Look out!" Williams threw himself away from the door.

A yellow beam of energy pierced through the door just above Andrews' helmeted head. Flecks of the stone-like wall material pattered off of Williams' faceplate.

"Holy shit!" Sergeant Andrews shouted.

"Return fire!" barked Williams as he reached for his own sidearm. First Contact, he was the senior officer on the spot, and the xenos were _shooting_ at them? Who would have thought that this would happen to him?

His thoughts — and the screams of the civilians — were interrupted by the staccato report of Andrews' rifle, the light coilgun sending 1mm rounds downrange at a rate of ten per second.

"The fuck? They've got some sort of goddamn shields, sir!" He fired another short burst. "Cheating bastards!"

Williams peered through the gap. None of the aliens had seemed to have been hit, but they had trundled into cover behind the columns that lined the corridor. "Keep up the fire! If it keeps their heads down, it keeps ours attached to our necks!"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Brantt! Get your rifle on the firing line! I'm gonna get us out of here!"

As the other marine took his place, the Navy Captain stepped away from the door. Williams pointed towards the other Unity officer, what's-his-name… "You! Ward! Get up the rope and secure the room! We're pulling out of here, back to the ships!"

Thankfully, he seemed to have no problems taking orders from Williams, quickly ascending the rope dangling from the hole made in the room's ceiling. Williams grabbed the two civilians and pushed them towards the rope. "Go! Get up there!"

Thankfully, even the less-than-athletic Dr. Paylenko was able to climb up the rope. Well, not so much _climb_ as _hold on while Ward lifts the rope_.

That only left Williams, the two marines…and Harper. Who was currently an entirely-immobile, multi-tonne heap of armor. Damn. Maybe he could hold long enough for her to wake up from whatever-the-hell hit her.

A shout from the marines preceded another three yellow beams piercing through the door in sequence. "They're getting closer, sir! I don't think they're afraid of our popguns anymore!"

Or maybe he couldn't hold long enough. Williams quickly glanced around the room. Could he possibly, say, hide Harper underneath something? Distract the xenos into following him instead of searching the room? Come back later to get her?

He shouted up the hole into the room above them. "Ward! Get over to the stairwell, start shooting down into the corridor!" The gun that the junior Unity officer had been carrying wasn't as unreasonably large as Harper's, but it looked large enough that maybe it would get the enemy's attention.

Heavy footfalls tracked across the ceiling, followed a short second later by the distinctive flat _crack_ of a railgun.

"That got their attention, all right!" whooped Brantt. "Hit 'em again!"

Ward's voice came over the radio. Williams hadn't heard the kid sound this excited all day. "Five-mil rail. Not a patch on the Captain's piece, but it'll do!" Another shot followed his sentence.

Williams turned back to scanning the room. At least someone was having fun.

There, against the far wall! There was a shelf, made from the same material as the walls around them. Whoever these aliens were, their architectural taste was _awful_. But on the shelf were several large spools of some unknown material. Maybe he could cover Harper with those, so that nobody looking in the room would instantly see a recognizable human. If the aliens were distracted by an ongoing gunfight…

A damn stupid plan. But he didn't have the time to come up with a better one.

"All right, we're bugging out of here! Brantt, up the rope!"

Andrews fired off a long burst as the other marine bolted to the rope and climbed up. Williams followed him up, happy to see that Brantt was now next to Ward, firing down the stairwell. "Andrews, you next!"

Williams dashed to the stairwell, firing a half-dozen shots from his own coilpistol blindly into the corridor below. If the marines' rifles hadn't done much, then his pistol certainly wouldn't, but if it distracted the enemy it was worth it.

A glance over his shoulder showed Andrews clambering up into the room. Now they could withdraw back to the ship. Hopefully, the enemy would waste time trying to find a non-broken stairwell for them to follow up, or at least rush past Harper to get to the rope.

"Marines, get the civilians back to the ship! We'll keep these guys busy for a minute, then follow you!"

"Sir!"

Not a moment later, the sound of buzzing droned over the rifle fire, drawing his attention back to the corridor below.

 _They can FLY!?_

One of the aliens, even uglier up close, was buzzing up towards the landing where Williams stood. Even as he stared in shock, it fired.

Thankfully, its aim must have been thrown off by flying. The yellow beam scorched past Williams' shoulder, although he could _feel_ the heat even through his armor.

Reflexively ducking away, he watched as the alien landed heavily on the landing, barely two feet away from him. Its four glowing eyes burned into his own, the barrel of its strange weapon aimed directly at him.

With a shout, Ward brought his railgun over to the target. The muzzle was mere centimeters away from the target's head when he fired.

 _I guess that's too close for their shields_ , thought Williams as a red cloud of gore erupted out of the other side of the alien's head. _Huh. They bleed the same color._

Scrambling back to his feet, Williams called out "Come on! We've got their attention, all right!"

Sprinting back up the stairs, he took his turn firing back down the stairwell to cover Ward's retreat.

As the two soldiers withdrew back up the stairs, Williams was struck with a thought. _At least they're too busy chasing us to find Harper. She might just sleep through all the excitement!_

* * *

AN: Okay, that's the first part of this story's First Contact section done. I've got the rest planned, and I'll be working on them between final exams & presentations. However, I do have a question for my readers (both of 'em!):

I'm planning on taking this story all the way through the 'canon' events, sort-of. What I'm wondering is whether people would prefer that I somewhat follow canon events (Heretic Geth raid on a Human colony, SA SpecTRe hunting down rogue Saren, etc) and just modify them to fit my story's universe, or should I create my own alternative version of how the Reaper's infiltration/attack goes down?

Feel free to leave your answers as a Review, or if you recognize this as a blatant attempt to garner more reviews for my story, just PM me! I won't be running a proper poll on my account, since those aren't really worth it with the small number of people who would possibly weigh-in.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Other 1/2th Contact

* * *

"Scout team reports all-clear." The Turian Blue Suns member reported. "They've found what looks like a stairwell, too."

Matriarch Sulita nodded, her smile hidden by the face-concealing helmet she wore. "Excellent. We shall proceed there immediately."

"As you say, ma'am."

It was a relief to see that the Captain in charge of the Blue Suns' ground teams was a Turian. They were far more acknowledging of a Matriarch's authority than most Batarian members. Sulita prided herself on not being as arrogant as most Asari of her age, but a little politeness from her subordinates let the expedition flow _much_ smoother.

The Blue suns soldiers started off down the corridor towards the stairs. The Matriarch followed them, knowing without looking that her team was following her in turn.

As if summoned, her favorite member of that team stepped up alongside her, opening a private radio channel. "Have you ever _seen_ a Prothean spaceport this well-preserved? Most of the structure is still intact!" Liara ran a hand along the black wall, her head constantly in motion to observe the corridor around them. Like the rest of the party, the young Maiden wore a full-body environmental suit and helmet to protect against the planet's unbreathable atmosphere, but Matriarch Sulita suspected that the girl's mouth hung open in wonder.

Not that she could blame her. "I do not believe that I have, no. This _is_ quite the find. A pity that we have only now reached it with this expedition." Her face soured. "Who knows what artifacts have been carried off by looters, or worse, destroyed?"

Liara's head spun to face her, the girl's faceplate glinting under the lights of the party's headlamps. "Looters? You think they could have snuck past the Hierarchy patrols?"

Sulita chuckled. "Snuck, yes, or simply bought their way through. A Turian is no more immune to bribery than any other being, and the promise of Prothean artifacts to plunder would loosen the wallets of a great many treasure-seekers."

"But it's a _Prothean site_! How could they just…just… _pillage_ it?"

"Not everyone shares you adoration for our mysterious predecessors, young one."

Their conversation halted as they rounded the corner, seeing the Blue Suns scout team a few meters away, standing on a landing in the stairwell. "We going up or down, ma'am?"

"We shall ascend to the higher floors, first."

* * *

With a concerted effort, Jackie Harper managed to block out the pain long enough to wrangle her neural implants back under control. She'd never had to hard-reboot the entire array before, and she wished she'd never have to do so again.

As the optical filters came back online, her vision returned. The ceiling above her was the same dull grey as it had always been, but there was some mesh-like pattern draped over her helmet. Damage to the visor? The neural tap connecting to her armor reported no damage to the suit, so what was on her?

Shaking her head, she blearily sat up. The mesh slid off, revealing itself as some sort of wire, draped from the shelf next to her across her body. What had happened while she was out?

The room around her was empty. Strange.

She pinged her Communications suite.

A blinding wave of pain swept her mind blank.

After a few seconds to gather herself, she keyed the radio to the inter-team channel. "This is Captain Harper. Anyone on this station, respond."

In amongst the static, she could faintly hear a response. "~~~at Captain, we've fallen~~~ship. Hos~~~gaged. We're on-~~~~~other team. Move t~~~~" The voice was entirely swallowed up by the hiss of static.

Odd. 'Other team'? She'd have to make her own way back to find out what had happened. Something was off about this — there was no way that she would have been left behind otherwise.

On the other hand, 'fallen'? Could some part of the structure collapsed while she was unconscious and dropped the rest of the team to a lower floor? It would explain why they'd left her here.

Blinking against the throbbing pain in her head, she stood up. Walking over to the rope dangling down into the center of the room, she gave it a solid tug. It seemed to be solid.

Before she could start climbing, a rustling came from the chamber above, like fabric rubbing together. Maybe the 'other team'? "Hello? Anybody up there?"

Now there were recognizable footsteps approaching the hole. But they didn't sound… _right._

Harper craned her neck back, the lights from her helmet spearing up through the aperture above.

 _What._

Some sort of humanoid creature stood there, looking down at her. Four glowing yellow eyes above a grey… _carapace_ , with four limbs.

And in those limbs…

She threw herself to the side as a bright lance tore through the space she had occupied.

Now out of sight of the alien, she quickly unslung her rifle, pointing it at the hole. She keyed her external speakers. "Whoever you are, cease fire. I'm not here to fight."

In lieu of an answer, the creature dropped down into the room. A second before it landed, _wings_ , of all things, appeared at its back to slow its descent.

And it was still pointing that laser-gun at her.

She fired first, however. The recoil threw even her armored form back, as the fifty-millimeter shell raced forward to impact the alien in the chest. A momentary glow flashed around the enemy, a split second before the shaped-charge detonated.

When the smoke cleared moments later, a few smoking carapace fragments lay scattered on the ground.

 _And that's why I carry this brick._

Cautiously, she approached the remains of the alien. _Here's hoping I didn't just ruin First Contact. But he —_ it? — _did shoot first._

At least this offered an explanation as to where the rest of the team had gone. The only question was why she had been left undisturbed by these unknown enemies.

More rustling from above drew her eyes back upwards. More of them.

Her rifle was pointed once more at the hole in the ceiling a split second before more glowing yellow eyes appeared. That was all she needed to see.

Her cannon roared once more. This time, however, the shell impacted on the lip of the aperture instead of her target.

The explosion of the round was followed by an ominous cracking noise. A spider-web of fissures rocketed outwards from the hole.

She had only a split-second to jump backwards as the ceiling collapsed, filling the room with rubble and dust.

Vision now restricted to less than a meter, she kept her rifle shouldered. Hopefully the target had perished in the fall.

No such luck. Another yellow beam of energy shrieked out of the haze, this time striking square against the armor over her right shin.

Neural blockers quickly intervened to stop the pain, but still she flinched. Whatever that was, it had gone straight _through_ her armor. A moment's query of the damage showed that her foot on that leg was non-responsive. At least she could still move the ankle using the suit's own actuators.

Now, for payback. She flicked her vision to infrared. Four thermal signatures. Lovely. Her first shot took the closest target in the chest, the thermal blast momentarily blinding her.

But it didn't stop her neural link to the cannon from reporting its empty magazine. With three more enemies in the room. She'd have to withdraw to reload.

She ducked to the side, towards the door. Ramming an armored shoulder into it, she bulled her way through the crumbling material. As she spun to move to the side, to put the wall between her and the enemy, her suit registered another impact, this time on her left shoulder.

Although it failed to fully penetrate the thicker armor there, her suit's electronics flickered. A momentary twitch of the actuators in her legs sent her tumbling forwards.

Towards the edge of the open stairwell.

She slid over into the darkness.

* * *

"Hold up — did you hear that?" The Blue Suns Captain ahead of her raised a hand.

Matriarch Sulita paused. The group had been ascending the seemingly-endless stairs for nearly fifteen minutes now. The scouts ahead of them had reported nothing out of the ordinary, while even Liara had seemed to lose interest in the building around them.

The endless drab-black walls had proven entirely monotonous, and the Matriarch had started to zone out. For all their technological wonders, the Protheans were _utterly_ uninteresting when it comes to architectural flair.

"I'm afraid I did no—"

"Shh!" The hissed command was out-of-character for the normally-respectful Turian mercenary. Sulita held back a reprimand. When a veteran soldier started talking like that, it was wise to listen.

The party stopped, waiting. A few more seconds rolled by.

A pair of _BOOM_ s echoed down the stairwell, from above.

"Scouts, report!"

"Came from above us, sir! Can't see anything up there, though."

The Captain turned to face the Matriarch. "We're supposed to be the only ones here, correct, ma'am?"

"Indeed."

Liara spoke up next. "Some Prothean sites have had machinery…activate at the arrival of an archaeological team."

Matriarch Sulita grinned. She could hear the faint hesitation in the girl's voice. She had to admit, it _was_ rather amusing when Liara had gotten caught in that stasis-trap a few years ago.

The mercenary Captain shook his head, slowly. "Possible, but" Another pair of _BOOM_ s resounded. "if so, I don't think it's working correctly."

"Then we have to hurry!" The young Maiden's voice was urgent. "Who knows what priceless machines could be irreparably broken while we stand here?"

Sulita had to agree with the girl, even if she could not phrase it so bluntly. "I do believe we should expedite our pace, Captain." A third pair of _BOOM_ s punctuated her statement. At least they were not growing noticeably louder.

"Very well, ma'am." The Suns officer waved his troops forward.

* * *

The floors flashed by in front of Jackie Harper's face. Too fast to count. With the aid of her neural implants, she fought down the panic at free-falling. At least she could distance herself from the enemy, break off and warn the rest of her team.

She pulsed the miniaturized impeller rig in her suit. A small-scale version of the same reactionless drive which propelled Human starships, it was intended to let Unity armor 'jump' without irreparably damaging whatever surface they stood upon. The wide boots of her armor could only spread the weight so much, after all.

It worked. Knocked from the center of the stairwell, she crashed into one of the stairs themselves.

Well, more like crashed _through._ A staccato series of shocks hit her as she plummeted through yet more levels of stairs. For a split-second, she thought she saw more lights on one of the floors. Could she have been lucky enough to fall right past the rest of her team?

Come to think of it, hopefully none of them had been hit by shrapnel from the stairs she'd broken.

After a half-dozen more broken stairways, she finally came to a halt on her back. Carefully pushing herself away from the edge and towards the more-solid wall behind her, she pulsed her damage-reporting module.

Nothing critical was down, but her armor had definitely not taken the fall well. Radio was down, speakers were down. Worse, most of her sensors were down, and her impeller rig had lost the rear node cluster.

The loss of her infrared vision was especially irritating, now. Looking up, she couldn't see a damn thing through all this dust.

That reminded her. She quickly checked her rifle. Still in working condition, thankfully. A rectangular brick with a muzzle at one end and a stock at the other _was_ good for toughness, it seemed.

Quickly, she reached into one of the ammunition pouches on her hip, pulling out a clip of three more five-centimeter shells. At a mental command, the bolt on her rifle snapped back, and she inserted the clip into the open magazine. The bolt slid forwards with a satisfying _click_.

Those were her last three explosive rounds, however. The other dozen were just solid slugs.

Hopefully she wouldn't need them. She chuckled softly at her own optimism.

In the meantime, she would try to link up with her team. Standing up, she warily pulsed her Communications suite once more. Again, the pain sent her staggering into the wall. Best to leave that alone until she got a good idea as to _what the Hell_ that alien statue-thing had done to her head.

Shaking her head to clear the pain, she started trudging up the stairs, keeping close to the wall to hopefully avoid the floor collapsing under her weight.

* * *

The only warning they had were a dozen loud _CRACK_ s from above, condensed into a split-second.

"Spirits!" The Suns Captain threw himself back, bowling into Sulita. Even before the two had fallen to the floor, the ceiling ahead of them collapsed as _something_ fell through, too fast for vision.

Thankfully, the floor that they were on held steady, even as dust filled the air from the collapsed ceiling and floor ahead of them. On the other side of the newly-formed gap, the two Batarian Suns members who had taken point clambered to their feet.

The Turian officer called out on the all-hands channel. "Report! What on Palaven _was_ that?"

Sulita would wager he was tired of saying _that_ today.

The rest of their party called in. At least nobody had been hit.

One of the Batarians ahead of them edged his way over to the hole, looking up and down. "Can't see a damn thing, sir! Still too much dust!"

The Captain stood, helping the Matriarch to her feet. "Ma'am, this is getting a bit hot for safety. I must ask that you and your team wait here while we figure out just what's going on." He gestured to the landing behind them.

Sulita nodded. She had enjoyed more than her share of adventure exploring old ruins like these, but this was the closest she had come to actual death. If whatever-that-was had fallen even two meters closer…

"Very well. We shall wait unti—"

"CONTACT!" One of the two Salarian scouts several floors above shrieked over the radio. The rattle of weapons fire followed a moment later.

"Who the hell is it?"

"Wheel-damned _Collectors_ , sir!"

"What!?"

"They're big, they've got glowing eyes, and they're _shooting at us!_ " A shout echoed down, loud enough to be heard even over the weapons fire. "Pazzik is hit! We're falling back!"

"Shit!" The Captain pointed towards the two Batarians on the other side of the meter-wide gap. "You two! Get up there and help them down!" As the two mercenaries sprinted further up the stairs, he turned back to Sulita. "Ma'am, get your people moving back to the ship! We'll delay them here!"

She nodded hastily and turned back to her team. The half-dozen other archaeologists stood dumbly, staring at her. "Well, get moving!"

That, at least, was enough to get them into motion.

"What the—!" The Turian Captain's surprised shout drew her to turn around, looking up through the gap. "Incoming!"

A buzzing noise heralded the landing of a pair of jet-black winged figures, descending through the hole in the stairs. Landing heavily on the edge, eight glowing yellow eyes turned towards the party.

Wordlessly, they lifted their rifles to fire.

Matriarch Sulita had a barrier raised before she even realized that she had fallen back into her old reflexes. As two bright beams of energy raced past her head, she flung a Throw into the left-most Collector.

That enemy was hurled back, bouncing off of the opposite edge of the hole before falling down out of sight. A burst from the Captain's shotgun sent the other tumbling after.

Only after the adrenaline had faded did Sulita notice the screaming. Whirling around, she saw that her team had all thrown themselves flat on the ground when the shooting started.

That had not protected all of them.

Eraani T'Seras held her right fist tightly around her left forearm, just short of where that arm was all but shot off. The rest of the Matron's forearm dangled from a few shreds of purple flesh. The junior professor was screaming at the top of her lungs, her visor gazing transfixed at the sight.

One of the Blue Suns dropped to a knee beside her, pulling his medical kit open. "Hold steady, ma'am!" The Batarian ran the diagnostic tool over her arm. "It's already cauterized, you'll be fine!"

Thank the Goddess. Sulita had worked with Eraani for centuries—she was practically a third daughter to her.

The Batarian medic glanced up towards her, opening a private channel to her and the Captain. "Ma'am, she's going into shock. We need to get her back to the ship, _fast_."

" _Damn_ it." Cursed the Turian. "We're eighty-seven floors up from our hangar, call it a twenty-five minute trip. Will she make it?"

The medic shook his head. "No, sir. She's borderline."

Sulita's heart stopped. What could she do? "But…the distance is mostly in this Goddess-damned stairwell. I'll take her."

"What?"

The Matriarch ran over to her friend, grasping her armor and pulling her to her feet. "I'll grab her and jump down the stairwell. I can land on the right floor, safely."

The two mercenaries exchanged looks. "You're the biotic, ma'am."

As Sulita pulled Eraani over to the edge of the pitch-black chasm, she opened a private channel. "Hold on, child, I've got you." To the Suns Captain, she added. "Fall back to the ship as fast as you can." Her voice took on the edge of command that had served her well during her Maidenhood as an Eclipse officer. "Keep them _all_ safe." The two Asari stepped over the ledge, and disappeared into the inky darkness.

* * *

AN1: I'm working on trying to get the two Asari characters well-written here. I mean, it's fun to try to try and think of how a ~900-year-old college professor would speak, especially compared to ~75-year-old Liara. (She's ~106 IIRC in 2182, so ~75 in 2151).

AN2: Also, I have absolutely no idea how a real archaeological expedition would go, let alone a Xeno-archaeological expedition. So I hope you don't mind that the Serrice expedition here mostly consists of "let's look around the building" instead of "okay, everybody start taking samples" or what-not.

AN3: Seriously, what color do Collectors bleed? I can't find any statement on that on any of the ME wikis I've found. So, I'm just assuming it's still red (same as Protheans).

AN4: Note that whenever I have one of the non-human characters refer to a measurement (meters, seconds, minutes, etc.) just assume it's translated from whatever equivalent measurement they're using. I'm not going to bother creating however many new words just for that minor detail.

AN5: So, I just realized that when writing about a team of ~7 Asari, I'm running low on ways to avoid writing "her" every other word. Sorry, Random Batarian Medic, you're a dude now.

AN6: Also, I'm sorry for releasing this in such small, ~3000-word chunks. That just has turned out to be about the easiest length for me to organize it into. Well, I use the word 'organize' loosely: I'm publishing this story as fast as I can write it. Still, 3k words a chapter seems to be about the most comfortable pace. I'll see if I can't improve that over Christmas.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Started: 19 December

Published: 25 December

Pre-note: So, as much as I love Wrex's character, I've since realized that I'm absolutely awful at actually writing him. I just can't get in-character, so to speak. So I'll try to keep his POV sections to a minimum.

* * *

With a growl of effort, Wrex forced his overtaxed biotics into hurling one more _warp_ into the Collector in front of him. The four-eyed alien collapsed to the floor, adding to the dozen already scattered about the landing.

Reflexes still twitchy from the shadow of the Blood Rage that he had not been able to entirely suppress, Wrex looked around the area. No more enemies in sight. Good. He hadn't had a fight like _that_ in centuries, even including the last time he'd tangled with Collectors. He'd never seen so many in one place, though, and these ones had fought _stupid_.

But their heavier armament did compensate for their suicidal aggression. Whatever those beam weapons were, they'd torn through his shields, barriers, armor and flesh. Trudging over to one of the fallen bodies, he let out a hiss of pain as he bent to grab one of the beam-rifles. He felt himself regenerating from the hits, but it certainly stung far more than normal weapons fire.

As the last of the mind-numbing adrenaline drained from his system, he took note of the condition of the stairs next to the landing. Something — in the confusion he had missed it — had ripped the stairway entirely away, leaving a good ten-meter gap between his landing and the next one up. That'd pose a bit of a problem for the mercenaries still several floors above.

But that wasn't his problem. What _was_ his problem was this damn door. The civilians, including the maiden that he was being paid to protect, had ducked into the adjacent corridor when the Collectors had attacked them again. That had been a good idea – they were out of Wrex's way while he fought off the assault.

What _hadn't_ been a good idea was for one of the civilians to somehow close the door after them. Wrex couldn't even raise them on radio.

With one armored fist, he knocked heavily on the closed door. The featureless grey slab didn't budge. He knocked again, hoping for a response.

Instead, he picked up _very_ heavy-sounding footsteps coming up the stairs from below. The only people he'd known to knock dust from the walls like that were other Krogan, and he was the only such being that should be on the planet.

So, assume hostile. Perhaps a new type of Collector to fight?

He flexed his biotics, only to have his nerves spike with pain. That was out, then. A quick glance to the fallen four-eyed aliens scattered around the floor gave him pause. Those had been trouble enough when he was ready for a scrap, so what new abomination would the Collectors send at him?

Time to _use_ that wisdom that he kept trying to drum into the younger pups. Wrex darted through the other doorway on the level, turning his suit lights off. Stepping partway around a junction in the corridor beyond, he exposed as little of himself to visibility from the stairs as possible. Better to ambush whatever this was.

* * *

Now several floors up from where her fall had stopped, Captain Harper once more jumped over the hole in the stairs with a burst from her impellers. Without the rear node cluster, the impeller rig was somewhat unbalanced, but enough for her to make the short jump safely.

Reaching the next landing, her jogging pace skidded to a halt. Six motionless bodies lay scattered about the floor. A moment's glance calmed her worry: all of the fallen were more of the four-eyed aliens who had attacked her. She must be catching up to the "other team" that she'd been told about over the radio. Could they have ambushed this group of enemies?

And what wounds they had! One of them had a hole straight through its torso, wide enough for her to fit her armored fist through. Indeed, the rest of the bodies had fared little better.

Harper frowned. She knew the System Alliance marines were fond of their heavy weapons, designed to make them a threat even to Unity soldiers, but not a one of the fallen aliens bore the smaller holes left by coilgun fire.

Tap-tap-tap.

She jerked her attention away from the bodies, looking instead at one of the doorways opening onto this landing. Unlike the others she had seen on her journey back up the stairwell, this door was closed.

Tap-tap-tap.

The tapping was definitely coming from the closed door, not the dark hallway to its left. And someone was on the other side. Looks like the SA team had hidden there. Stepping over to the door, she tapped her own message back, in Morse.

C-L-E-A-R.

The response was…less-than-coherent. No code she recognized. Indeed, they almost sounded panicked at the end, there.

Perhaps the Marines had not _meant_ to close the door? They might be trapped! She tapped out another message.

S-T-A-N-D-B-A-C-K.

She raised her rifle, held in a reverse grip, and brought the stock crashing down against the door. A few narrow cracks shot out from the impact, and yet more dust thickened the air. Another crash deepened the cracks. At this rate, she'd be through the door in minutes.

Or she _would_ , if she hadn't been interrupted by an unintelligible shout from off to her left.

* * *

Well, it didn't _look_ like a Collector, Wrex mused. Whoever, or _whatever_ , this new person was, they lacked the distinctive four glowing eyes.

But that didn't mean they were friendly. At first, Wrex thought that they must be another Krogan, as large and bulky as they were. But the dim light cast by the diffusion of the unknown figure's armor-mounted lights showed gauntlets with five fingers.

So maybe it was just the most obscenely well-armored Asari he'd ever heard of. Either way, they weren't anyone that Wrex knew should be there.

He watched as the figure ground to a halt at the landing, the heavy-looking helmet moving back and forth between the bodies. It snapped the massive gun it carried up to its shoulder quickly, scanning around.

Wrex ducked fully around the corner, out of sight of this newcomer. That weapon it — _she_ , presumably, as they seemed to be an Asari — carried looked even larger than Wrex's own claymore, and even _he_ couldn't move his around that rapidly.

Republic special forces? SpecTRe? But what would drag them all the way out to a dig like this?

No matter. Wrex was paid to do exactly _one_ thing: keep Dr. T'Soni alive. The newcomer wasn't anything worth bothering with…so long as they didn't threaten him or his charge.

Not a moment later, and he heard the solid tapping at the door behind which the civilians had fled.

The figure on the landing quickly turned to face the door. After the second set of taps, she walked over to the closed entrance and began to examine it. The unknown Asari started tapping a message of her own back.

Presumably a message, at least. Wrex knew a half-dozen different basic codes that could be used to communicate by tapping, but he couldn't recognize this one. But then again, escorting these Asari core-world civilians around was the closest he'd gotten to _civilized_ society in nearly a century, so there were certainly holes in his knowledge.

After she finished tapping, the unknown Asari — given her heavy armor, Wrex decided to call her 'Tank' for the time being — raised her gun and brought it crashing down against the door.

He could see the cracks that spread from the impact. That was a hit even a Krogan would be proud of.

Who _was_ this person? He'd heard stories from the Rebellions of some of the…squishier…species experimenting with using powered armor to match Krogan strength. But to the best of his knowledge, all of those programs had been cancelled after the Genophage proved to be an utterly devastating weapon by itself.

So, special forces, SpecTRe, or…Justicar? This seemed rather unsubtle even for those fanatic lunatics. Still, Wrex couldn't think of any good reasons why this Asari wouldn't have made herself known earlier. Or especially made herself _useful_ when the Collectors attacked.

Wrex would have to talk to her, find out where she stood before she could threaten his charge. He experimentally flared his biotics. The pain was dull this time. Good – he had that to fall back on if this went south.

Stepping out from cover, he strode towards the Asari, who was raising her gun for another bash at the door. Shotgun held in one hand, neutrally pointed at the floor, he called out "Who are you? Identify yourself!"

* * *

Harper spun, gun slipping back into a ready stance. She hadn't heard anyone over the radio, and that shout hadn't been any language recognizable to her.

There! Movement in the dark corridor off to the side. As her suit lights swung onto the target, she saw…

Another alien. At least this one didn't have those damn four glowing eyes. But it _was_ holding a great big gun not-quite-pointed in her direction.

And it was, presumably, talking to her.

Well, at least it didn't shoot first. But her priority was to get the Marines out from behind that door. For all she knew, they were trapped in some broom closet with only seconds more oxygen remaining. She stuck her left hand out, palm outwards, in what she hoped was an understandable command. "Stop!"

* * *

'Tank' spun to face him, thankfully not shooting first. Maybe she _was_ friendly.

Not a moment later, she threw her left hand towards Wrex, palm-out. He recognized a _Throw_ when he saw one.

So, not friendly.

Cursing his luck, Wrex reflexively reinforces his barriers at the same instant as he snapped his shotgun up to his shoulder.

The blast took Tank directly center-of-mass, but strangely he saw no flicker of either shield or barrier. What sort of Asari soldier walked around a combat zone with her barrier down?

An inexperienced one, apparently. His shot must have surprised her enough that she'd lost concentration on her _throw_ even before it left her hand.

Wrex threw himself into a charge. If Tank was just some new SpecTRe attacking him for unknown reasons, he would prefer not to kill her outright. The Council may have the attention span of a Vorcha on Red Sand, but a _dead_ SpecTRe tended to catch their ire far more than a _wounded_ SpecTRe.

Unfortunately, inexperienced or not, Tank managed to get her gun pointed towards Wrex just before he slammed into her. With one booming shot, his barriers dropped by more than half, causing him to flinch from the backlash. The echoes of the shot still resounding in his ears, he rammed one shoulder into Tank's chest.

Given Asari physiology, that should knock her breath from her chest at the least, armor or not.

So he was surprised at the sharp blow to his left side, as Tank slammed her rifle side-on just below his shoulder. As the impact knocked him back a step, she brought a knee up to hit his own chest, but Wrex side-stepped to dodge.

He countered with a biotic-enhanced punch to Tank's midriff, where her arms were out-of-position to block.

His blue-glowing fist connected.

Tank tipped backwards, her armor seeming to spasm for a second as she fell.

Right onto the already-damaged door that the archaeologist civilians were behind. Tank's armored form sheared through the cracked structure, disappearing amidst a cloud of dust and fragments.

Wrex cursed as he heard a scream come from the hole. He _sincerely_ hoped that none of the civilians had been behind there, especially not his charge.

As he approached the ruins of the door, suddenly a shape loomed out of the dust.

He recognized it as the business end of Tank's gun at the same moment as it fired. The shot impacted his barriers directly over his snout.

If Wrex had thought that the shot Tank had hit him with earlier had hurt, this one he _really_ felt. His barriers dropped completely, the weaker shields underneath failed instantly, and the shot ricocheted off the armored visor of his helmet.

Cracks shot across the visor as Wrex toppled onto his back and slid along the floor made slick by Collector blood.

He stopped up against one of the fallen four-eyed aliens, and quickly scrambled to his feet. Whatever cannon that was that Tank was using, he had _no_ desire to be hit by it again.

Looking up, he saw Tank charging towards him. Her gun poured steam from its muzzle, and all along the sides. Hopefully that meant that she had burned out the circuitry.

But he was exhausted, his defenses down, and low on options.

But he always had his backup.

He threw out his hand towards Tank, pouring all of his remaining energy into one last _warp_. It struck her left fist a moment before her punch sent Wrex off the side of the landing and into the open air of the stairwell.

* * *

For a second, Harper just stared into the chasm where the alien had fallen. This stairwell design was a serious safety hazard.

She shook her head irritably, trying to wrestle her thoughts back into order. It wasn't easy – her pain-suppression routines were almost overtaxed from the fight. She glanced down at her left hand, where _whatever_ the alien had hit her with had caused the armor to completely lock up. That arm was all-but-useless for the time being.

And if _she_ had survived falling down the center of the stairwell, it was possible that that alien would be back. She'd have to get back to the ships fast. Turning around, she stalked back to the door which she had crashed through.

Peering through the dust that still filled the air, she could only see one human lying on the floor, unmoving save for the slight movement of her chest. At least she was breathing steadily.

Harper frowned. As far as she knew, none of the Alliance's ground teams used a white-and-green color scheme for their armor. And where was the rest of the team, anyways? She couldn't see any weapons nearby, either. Odd.

Could this be another civilian that had gotten split away from the other SA marine team? Another one of Dr. Paylenko's grad students?

The pain leaking through Harper's suppressors wasn't helping her mood, and her emotional-control routines were tasked to saturation trying to keep her anger at the SA troops under control.

She would have some _very_ pointed words with Williams when she got back. Their leaving Harper behind was _possibly_ understandable — she knew that her armor meant that none of them could have hoped to move her when she had fallen unconscious — but whoever thought leaving this girl behind was acceptable needed to be corrected.

Stooping to pick up the white-and-green figure, Harper slung her over her left shoulder. That arm wasn't useful for much more than keeping her in place, after all.

Before using her impeller rig to jump over the hole to the next floor up, she ran a quick systems diagnostic. God only knew she could _feel_ enough damage to her armor from that last fight.

The impeller rig came back as functional enough, but her radio was down, and the firing rails on her gun were warped from that over-heat shot she'd hit the dinosaur-alien with. It wouldn't be able to manage more than twenty-percent-power shots. That wouldn't have been a problem if she was still using he high-explosive rounds, but she was down to her solid kinetic rounds now.

She placed her left arm protectively over the unconscious civilian draped over her shoulder. She'd have to double-time it back to the ship, and hope that she could just run past any more enemies that she encountered on the way.

* * *

AN1: I don't actually know all of the Mass Effect biotic-related hand-motions. So I'm just assuming the one for _throw_ is just pushing your hand out towards the target, palm-out. This, unfortunately for Harper, just happens to be identical to (in the US, at least) the reflexive hand gesture for telling someone to stop. I've heard stories about this sort of mis-interpretation of hand gestures between cultures on Earth, so it seemed appropriate to have it screw everything up in a First Contact scenario.

AN2: Since SpecTRe in canon stands for "Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," writing it SPECTRE as I've seen some authors do seems wrong. It's not exactly an acronym, after all. Of course, given that, presumably the title "SpecTRe" either doesn't spell an actual word in any Citadel-peoples language, or maybe the position in general has a different name depending on what language you're using to talk about it. Seriously, forget the Biotics, the FTL travel, all the other Sci-Fi stuff that ME canon has. Their bloody magical translators are the _real_ miracle technology there.

AN3: As far as I can tell, there really isn't any _heavy_ powered armor in the ME canon universe. I mean, most "heavy" armor in the game is powered armor to some degree, but there doesn't seem to be anything serving as a mid-point between standard infantry and, say, an Atlas mech. Which is a pity: I'd love to see SPEHSS MEHREEN SHEPAHRD, or at least an Asari Space Marine. I think Samara would have looked good in Raven Guard colors.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7:

Started: 26 December 2016

Published: 5 January 2016

* * *

Wrex leaned against the wall for support. His nerves _burned_ from exhaustion, especially from catching himself after that fall. He could stand the pain, and without a foe in front of him he was able to keep the Blood Rage under control as well.

Of course, it would be easier to keep control if this _idiot_ would just shut up. "Now listen here, Krogan, I don't _have_ any troops available to mount a pursuit. Whoever that was that knocked you silly, they killed two of my troops before running off. Counting the wounded, we're at less than half-strength. We're going to fall back and defend the remaining civilians until our backup arrives."

"You didn't even scratch them?" Before the Blue Suns Captain could respond, another thing that the Turian had mentioned struck Wrex. "Wait, _remaining_ civilians?" He pushed himself off of the wall and resumed jogging back up the stairs, ignoring how his body ached.

"Yeah, they were carrying one of the scientists with them."

"Did you see which one?" He had a bad feeling about this. There was only one of the remaining science team who was valuable enough as an individual to be singled out for abduction.

"Hell if I know, they all wear the same uniform."

Wrex finally reached the landing where he had fought Tank. Hustling over to the crashed-through door, he broadcast over the civilian-team radio frequency. "Come out! Coast's clear."

"O-okay."

Ten seconds later, and a helmeted head peered cautiously around the corner of the hallway, several meters deeper away from the stairwell. After a moment, the rest of the Asari civilians hurried over to Wrex.

The closest one in the group spoke first. "Did you find Liara? She stayed by the door, to try to open it."

Wrex punched the wall next to him, snarling in frustration. _Of course_. He switched languages, swearing viciously in Uknatt. When one absolutely _had_ to vocally express one's fury, look no further than the _old_ Krogan languages. None of the newer tongues that thought calling someone a pyjack was an insult worth mentioning.

Taking a deep breath, he spoke in a forced-calm voice. "No, I did _not_ find the young Ms. T'Soni." He trudged over to the base of the stairs upwards before continuing. "Would you happen to know any well-equipped factions that would want to abduct her?"

"What!?"

Wrex sighed, examining the hole in the stairs ahead of him. He _could_ use his biotics to jump across, but since this hole seemed to continue for many floors above, he knew that he lacked the energy to make that many jumps. Whoever Tank was, for her to keep jumping that many times meant an experienced biotic.

Not someone that Wrex wanted to tangle with again right now.

At that moment, another announcement cut in on the common channel. "I'm coming up with the rest of my troops. Captain Varus, what's the situation?" Wrex recognized the voice of Captain Hadd-vosh, the senior Blue Suns officer on the expedition. The Batarian's voice was level and straight-forward, with none of the bluster that Wrex had come to associate with it. Apparently the Captain could act professional when needed. Good to see.

"Collectors have fallen back, sir. I've got five KIA, two wounded but stable. We were also attacked by an unknown party who captured one of the scientists before fleeing."

"Unknown party?"

"Yes, sir. They beat the shit out of that Krogan bodyguard, and killed two of my men. Some Batarian wearing super-heavy armor, damned if I know who they're working for though."

Wrex cut in. "Batarian?"

The Turian officer's voice dropped its respectful tone. "Yeah. They might have kicked your ass without a scratch, but I tagged 'em with a shot to the arm as they fled. Got a trail of red blood leading up from here, therefore Batarian." To Wrex's shout of outrage, he added "Don't worry, I didn't hit the civilian."

Wrex held back a retort. Now wasn't the time. "Well, whoever they are, they took Dr. T'Soni. We need to go after them."

As Captain Varus began to object, Captain Hadd-vosh interrupted. "Agreed."

"Good to hear it." Wrex responded. "I'll come with you."

"I won't turn down more help."

Wrex grinned thinly. Hadd-vosh was an entirely different person when in the field, it seemed. That would explain why he was the senior officer, instead of Varus. So, Wrex would contribute what knowledge he had. "The unknown's a biotic, too. Jumped over at least a dozen five-meter gaps without slowing down. They're experienced at it, too — I thought they were Asari at first."

"Damn biotics." The Turian muttered. "That would explain how they were carrying this big-ass gun around with 'em. Dropped it when I hit them, though."

Captain Hadd-vosh spoke next. "Do you recognize the design?"

"No, sir. It looks like some sort of grenade launcher, though, going by the muzzle diameter."

"I see. Hold your position, I'll link up with you and see if it's any gun I know. In the meantime, get the civilians ready to move. I've got engineers laying platforms over these holes as we go up."

Wrex relayed the instructions to the scientists, and waited. Ten minutes later, the relief party had finally arrived at his floor. As the civilians were escorted back down by four of the mercenaries, Hadd-vosh walked up to Wrex. "You ready to go?"

The Krogan veteran nodded, tracing the cracks in his visor with one finger. It wasn't enough to breach the helmet, but it was close. "I'd like to even out the score."

* * *

Captain Harper finally reached the floor where she had fought the four-eyed aliens. Thankfully, none of them seemed to have stuck around, only the remains of the two that she had killed earlier.

With one last pulse of her over-taxed impeller rig, she jumped up to the room above the one with that _damned_ mind-frying statue in it.

Her right arm throbbed dully, despite the best efforts of her pain-suppression routines. Some _third_ kind of alien — and wasn't this turning into a damn party? — had shot her in the wrist as she ran past, and then two more had tried to physically block her on the next floor.

Tried. They'd been body-checked into the open stairwell. Still, that one lucky shot had gotten through the thinner joint armor and ripped through the tendons on the inside of her wrist. The auto-sealant had stopped the bleeding, but the suddenly-useless fingers had dropped her railgun.

She _liked_ that gun.

"I hope you appreciate all I've done for you." She muttered to the figure draped over her left shoulder. With Harper's helmet speakers and radio broken, the sound wouldn't leave her helmet, of course. Still, as the unknown civilian hadn't moved since Harper had pulled her out of the rubble, she was probably still unconscious.

Whoever they were, they'd owe Harper one helluva debt of gratitude when they got back to the ship. She didn't even know who the civilian was – she hadn't had the time to look for a name-tag or anything before running.

The jogging Unity officer approached the last corridor that would lead to the bay where the SSV _Defiant_ was parked. Heavy footsteps beating in her ears, she turned the last corner to the bay.

And immediately spun to the left so that her right side faced the line of guns leveled at her.

It looked like the _Defiant_ 's whole marine complement were bunkered down behind piles of rubble and spare parts. Near the middle, she spotted the blue-and-gold light Unity armor of Lieutenant Ward among the sea of white-and-blue SA colors.

Thankfully, they held fire. Harper strode forwards, right arm tapping three times at the side of her helmet to indicate a radio failure. She wasn't even going to _try_ to reboot her Unity Communications implants before they had a good examination.

As she walked through the center of the makeshift fortifications, she was joined by one of the SA soldiers, with Commander's rank insignia. Williams, then. The two of them stepped into the _Defiant_ 's airlock.

Once cycled through, Williams removed his helmet. "Damn glad to see you're okay, Harper."

As the two turned down the corridor towards the ship's medbay, Harper could only nod and hold up her non-functional right hand in response. Her external speakers were broken, and her left hand was busy keeping the unconscious civilian held safely. She would have to wait to get her helmet off to talk.

"Ah, hand's busted. One of those flying four-eyed bastards, right?"

The two walked into the ship's tiny medbay. Harper looked around to try to find the ship's corpsman.

Williams saw her looking and shook his head. "I sent Hans to guard the door with the rest. He's a Marine first, after all." Rather sheepishly, he added, "We were just about to go back down after you when you ran up." He nodded towards the body slung over the Captain's shoulder. "So, that one doesn't look like one of the four-eyes. Who's your friend?"

What?

Harper jerked her head over to stare at the Commander, who just frowned a question back at her. Quickly laying the body onto the examination table in the center of the room, Harper clumsily tore her helmet off, one-handed. "What do you mean, 'who'? She's part of your second team, right?"

"Uh, we were going to _be_ the second team. Everybody's out watching the door, you're the only one who was missing."

As one, the two officers turned to look at the still-unmoving civ— _humanoid_ on the table. "Well, then who the Hell did I grab?"

* * *

Wrex led the Blue Suns party up the stairs. He _almost_ wanted to thank that Turian mercenary for hitting Tank with a shot earlier – there were enough drops of blood for him to follow their path. Hopefully they would catch up with the kidnappers before they fled the system.

Wrex had never _failed_ a contract before. Certainly, there had been a few that he outright quit partway through, generally due to moral conflicts, but he'd always finished every assignment that he had _wanted_ to complete.

He'd even talked a few times with Dr. T'Soni on the trip to this grave-world. As painfully naïve and overly-kind as the young maiden was, the Krogan had taken a liking to her. She was just so…childlike. Not the aggressive bellicosity of proper Krogan children, but it had tickled some deeply-buried instincts that he had tried to ignore for most of his adult life.

As far as evolution was concerned, a Krogan male who _wasn't_ a father must be some sort of failure, after all. He hadn't been back to Tuchanka in centuries, though, so he remained childless. Precious few Krogan females ever left the homeworld these days, and absolutely none who could bear children.

Altogether, he could see why quite a few other Krogan had taken to the idea of 'fathering' Asari children. Any blue daughter of his would be quite different than timid Liara, though. The poor girl couldn't have a sliver of Krogan ancestry in her.

His musings were interrupted as the blood-trail suddenly veered off of the landing and into one of the side-corridors. "Hold up, trail goes in there." He pointed to the dark tunnel.

"I see." Captain Hadd-vosh paused. "And audio sensors are picking up wind. We must be close to the outside."

Captain Varus added, "That matches what our navigation systems say. We should be near the top corner of the building. The enemy can't be far." He nodded at the only remaining Salarian in the group. "Rammiz, take point."

Wrex faintly heard the Blue Suns trooper mutter "Rammiz, scout ahead. Rammiz, block the five-ton enemy with your body. Rammiz, do everything."

The veteran Battlemaster grinned inside his cracked helmet. _That's life as a mercenary, kid._

After less than a minute of slow movement along the dark corridor, Rammiz used his free hand to signal for the party to stop. With his other hand, he slowly extended the sensor probe held in his right hand around the corner.

A split-second later, and a loud _crack_ echoed down the corridor just as a cloud of pulverized wall-material erupted right next to the Salarian. "Get back!" the trooper shouted, hurling himself away from the corner.

Two more shots flew through the space where the mercenary had been a moment before. Wrex narrowed his eyes. Those shots had not only gone _through_ the wall, but they'd also gone slow enough for his eyes to catch a blurry image of the projectiles as they flew past.

Those were _not_ standard mass-effect weapons. He'd heard rumors of super-high-caliber prototype weapons being developed by the Batarian Hegemony, but as far as he knew the new 'kishock' gun had never yet been deployed.

Who _were_ these people?

"Uh, sorry." Muttered Rammiz. "Those lunatics are lined up over there with Wheel-damned _grenade launchers._ Thought we were going to get pasted."

"Anything else?" snapped Captain Varus.

"Uh," the Salarian jumped back to his feet in that unnervingly-fast way that his kind could. "Six soldiers, looked like five Batarians and one Asari. They're bunkered down behind cover in a line maybe fifteen meters away from the corner. Behind them is a hangar open to the outside." He paused for a moment. "And a ship, looked like a small frigate. Didn't recognize the design, though. Warship, definitely – had GARDIAN domes on the flank I could see." Rammiz held up the still-sparking stump of the sensor cluster in his right hand. "I'd show you, but, well…"

Despite himself, Wrex was impressed. That was some _good_ reconnaissance for a split-second view through a remote camera.

Captain Hadd-vosh mused aloud. "Damn. No way we're assaulting under point-blank ship-grade laser fire." He left their radio channel for a few seconds before returning. "All right, the _Ked'vash_ and the _Eboracum_ coming down to give us some warship support of our own." He turned his helmet to face the Salarian scout. "You're certain that you didn't see our kidnapped civilian?"

"No, sir. Just the six soldiers."

"Damn. She's been taken aboard their ship already. Hopefully our frigates will get here soon enough to block theirs from leaving the planet. In the meantime, we stall for time."

"How, sir?"

"We negotiate."

* * *

Williams and Harper both jumped at the shout.

"Contact!" after warning the team, Lieutenant Ward's railgun spat out three shots.

Aboard the _Defiant_ , Williams shared a look with the Unity senior officer. "Harper, get over to the armory, two hatches down the hallway. Grab a reserve helmet and whatever gun you want." He glanced over her armor, from cracked faceplate to dented shoulder plates down to her blood-encrusted right gauntlet. Whoever she had fought down there, they were evidently enough to maul someone wearing Unity heavy armor. "We'll want you as combat-capable as possible, I suspect."

He then followed her out of the medbay, locking the door behind him. He still had no idea who Harper had carried back to the ship, but they were unarmed and the medbay only had the one entrance.

Running into the airlock, he waited for the thing to cycle him through. "Any more movement?"

"None, sir." Reported Sergeant Andrews. "Don't think they want to eat a round from the Lieutenant, here."

"Good." They still didn't know who they were facing. In the back of his head, Williams fervently hoped that this would end without further bloodshed. He didn't want to go down in history as the Human who bungled First Contact by starting a war.

The outer airlock hatch opened, and he stepped back out into the hangar. Williams started jogging over to the barricades nearly a hundred meters away.

Before he got there, Andrews commed over the all-hands channel "Sir, I hear something from the corridor. Sounds like shouting, sir."

That was new. "The aliens are trying to communicate?"

"Guess so, sir. Orders?"

Williams chewed on his lip, thinking. Only briefly, of course. He was a well-trained officer. "Hold your fire. Maybe we can get a cease-fire. Shoot only if they fire first."

After a moment of hesitation, the Sergeant responded "Yes, sir."

Just as Williams ran up to the barricade, he saw movement in the shadows at the corner. "Hold fire!" Looking more closely, he saw…hands. Armored hands. Four fingers and a thumb, sticking around the corner, conspicuously empty.

Hopefully that was a good sign. Now Williams himself could hear more shouting, in an unsurprisingly unintelligible language.

He wracked his mind for the SA official First-Contact procedure. No success. "Anyone here know the proper First-Contact procedure?" A chorus of negatives answered him. "Damn. Ah, to Hell with it. Corporal Brantt, you're our resident science-fiction geek. You want to take point here?" It seemed as good an idea as any.

"Hell yeah! Uhh, Hell yeah, _sir!_ " The young marine paused a few seconds before activating his external speakers. In a near-shout, he slowly enunciated "WE COME IN PEACE! Uh…SEND OUT A NEGOTIATOR!"

* * *

Captain Errak Hadd-vosh held his breath as he slowly extended his empty hands around the corner. He'd shouted out their wish to negotiate, but he knew that he would have to expose himself to gunfire to prove his peaceful intent.

If only he could have sent one of the other troops instead of himself. But _he_ was the one with an "inactive" commission in the Hegemony External Forces. If these kidnappers were Hegemony troops as the Krogan had suggested, then only Hadd-vosh should be the one to talk to them.

Of course, if they _were_ fellow loyal sons of Khar'shan, then Errak's mission had just got a lot more complicated.

His thoughts were interrupted by unintelligible gibberish shouted from up ahead. Well, his hands were un-harmed, but he didn't recognize the language. It wasn't any Batarian tongue, certainly. His heart leaped before he wrestled his emotions back under control. It was good if this was not a conflict between his cover as a mercenary and his duty to the Hegemony, but that still left the question of just _what_ was going on instead.

He shrugged. There was only one way to really get to the bottom of this. He shouted back "I am coming out now. I am unarmed." He stepped around the corner.

And frowned. Seven figures stood or crouched behind makeshift cover, one more person than the scout had reported. And they were all aiming large guns at him.

At least they weren't shooting. He forced his voice to be calm. "Please, lower your weapons. We wish only to talk." Muting his external speakers, he changed channels. "Frigates, how long until you are in position?" Something about these unknown abductors seemed _off_ , and he'd feel much better with heavier backup.

"Two minutes, sir."

Good. One of the figures ahead lowered its gun and stepped forwards. Even though they were speaking slowly and clearly making an effort to enunciate clearly, their speech was utterly unintelligible.

He looked over their armor and weapons, frowning. That wasn't any sort of equipment he recognized. It looked so bulky, almost crude. "I cannot understand you. Do you speak Common?" The standard language used in Citadel space for well over a thousand years, almost everyone had at least _some_ knowledge of it. Even though most societies still spoke their native languages _at home_ , Common was the, well, _common_ link.

More gibberish was the only response. This was _very_ odd. Were they being deliberately obtuse?

In a flash of inspiration, Errak focused his four eyes more closely on the figures in front of him. Yes, they _resembled_ Batarians and Asari under their all-concealing armor, but that didn't mean that they _were_. Only one good way to find out.

He slowly reached up, and removed his own outer helmet. The small breather mask stayed on due to the unbreathable atmosphere, though. The figures in front of him froze for a few heartbeats, before the one that had talked 'at' him slowly removed their own helmet.

* * *

"Well, that makes two 'four-eyes' aliens in one day. Think they're related, sir?" joked Corporal Brantt. Even after he had taken his helmet off, the marine could breathe well thanks to the pressure-mask over his mouth. Since it also held his microphone, he was also still readably heard over the radio.

Williams was slow in responding. "…I hope not." This alien looked _weird_. They looked vaguely humanoid, but the upper pair of eyes ruined any real resemblance. The nose-like structure was rather flat, but a raised line of…cartilage?... ran up the middle of the alien's face.

That being said, it wasn't as ugly as half the things Williams had seen movies come up with.

Williams brought his train of thought back to the present. The alien seemed to be trying to communicate, moving its hands around and pointing. It would point with one hand behind the SA marines, towards the _Defiant_ , run that hand down the front of its chest, and then point at the floor at its feet.

"What do you think he's saying, sir?"

The alien repeated the movement, this time moving its hand over its chest in a rounded motion. Williams thought of the unknown figure that Harper had left in the medbay, and _her_ very much feminine form. Ah. "I think he's saying that Captain Harper grabbed his girlfriend, and he wants us to bring her out here."

"Huh. The Unity abducting all the cute girls now? I thought that was just in movies."

Despite the situation, Williams chuckled. "No, it looks like this was all just a big misunderstanding after all." He carefully nodded towards the alien, and then added "Andrews, run back to the ship and grab the person lying in medbay. Tell Harper to stay in the ship, too." Hopefully that would help calm tensions.

* * *

A new species. Captain Hadd-vosh watched as one of these newcomers turned and ran back to their ship. Hopefully that meant that they had understood him.

However, it still left the question of just _why_ they had abducted the civilian in the first place. They seemed happy enough to talk instead of shoot, now. Well, _communicate_ , at any rate. Could their kidnapping of Dr. T'Soni be meant as a demonstration of their superiority? A demonstration of power?

Had the Batarian Hegemony finally met another space-faring people who understood the importance of showing who was superior?

Errak drew himself up straighter, standing as tall as his frame would allow. While it would be nice to find an alien culture that was palatable to proper Batarian ethics, the newcomers would need to know that they were still the _new_ ones. Perhaps if they were amenable, they could be allies of the Batarian peoples against the cultural oppression of the Citadel societies.

But not _equal_ allies. Tilting his head slightly to the right, Hadd-vosh pointed to himself while carefully pronouncing "Ba-tar-ian."

After only a short pause, the un-helmeted figure — presumably a male, going by the flat chest under the armor — bobbed its head and responded "Hu-man."

Human. If they had understood his meaning, then that was the name of their species.

Thinking for a moment, the Batarian Captain gestured to the corridor behind him. Holding up three fingers, he spoke slowly. Even if his words meant nothing to these 'Humans,' hopefully the calm tone would carry through. "I will bring three of my men forwards."

The Human in front of him bobbed its head again. Hopefully that was their way of communicating 'affirmative.' Errak keyed his radio. "Captain Varus, Trooper Rammiz, and Mr. Urdnot, stow your weapons and come out here, slowly." It would be best to show these Humans the variety of species he had in his squad. That would properly impress upon them that they were the weaker party here.

He faced the Human as the Turian, Salarian and Krogan walked up behind him.

"Spirits, a new species?" Captain Varus spoke first.

"Indeed." Hadd-vosh replied. He would have a great many messages to send later. The Hegemony would need to know of this immediately. All-but-outcasts from Citadel space, the Batarian people would jump at the possibility of establishing communications with these Humans before the Citadel could send their own arrogant representative.

* * *

AN1: So, according to all the canon ME background lore that I can find, the System Alliance's military organization is insane. Seriously, Ashley Williams is supposedly in the "Navy." As a ground soldier, a rifle(wo)man. I kid you not. I'd just always assumed that she was Alliance Marines, or maybe Army. Also, her grand-dad, General Williams? Also a "Navy" guy who was a "General," in charge of land forces. WTF Bioware? Needless to say, my story isn't following that confusing nonsense.

AN2: Speaking of canon General Williams, anyone who doesn't know what he looks like needs to look up his page on a ME wiki. Seriously, the dude looks like alternate-universe Napoleon Bonaparte, if he'd been borne as an angry Prussian nobleman instead of a Corsican. I just can't look at his face without laughing, he just looks so cliché. I'm now regretting not giving my Williams (Sr.) in this story a cartoonishly-overdone German accent now.

AN3: Yes, yes, I know, creating a new language called "Common" isn't exactly inventive. But I didn't want to incorporate Bioware's magical universal translators into this story. So I'm just going with "most everyone in Citadel space and even the Terminus learns at least some of this one standardized language" idea instead. The name is deliberately boring, since in my mind a language that would be designed to be spoken by dozens of different species would probably have to ditch a bunch of the 'flavor' that most natural languages build up over time in order to be universally understandable.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

Started: 13 January 2017

Published: 25 January 2017

* * *

Captain Eumenia Sanvir drummed her fingers on the armrest of her command chair, her only outward sign of worry. Her convoy was less than an hour away from the relay, and there had been no sign of their pursuers. The tips of her crest itched, an infuriating physiological reaction to her unease.

She'd worked with Captain Gallus before. This sort of patience wasn't like him. Perhaps he _had_ learned something from serving alongside the Asari members of the occupation force.

She glanced over the tactical display. No changes. Her flagship, the light cruiser _Nefrane_ , was just over a thousand kilometers ahead of the convoy. Four frigates were spread out abreast of the cruiser, spaced a few hundred kilometers apart. Meanwhile, the other Asari cruiser attached to the convoy, the _Naera_ , led the remaining eight frigates in a much closer escort around the two troop transports that formed the convoy.

Yet even the powerful sensor arrays of the _Nefrane_ hadn't spotted the Turian OpFor. Normally Captain Sanvir would have had her frigates spread out further, to give more warning of incoming attackers, but by the Goddess did Gallus love his fighters, so she kept her escorts in a tighter formation to defend against the swarm of angular Turian fighters that she was expecting.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a bright-purple light blossomed in the center of the tactical display. Contact.

Her heart skipped a beat. That was in the _middle_ of the formation, barely a hundred kilometers from the transports! How!?

Even before the thought had reached her mind, the automated defenses of the escorts activated. The GARDIAN lasers of the Nefrane and the forward frigates opened fire even at long range, 'tagging' five of the thirty-seven fighters. Laser fire from the close-in escorts disabled another thirteen.

The remaining nineteen small craft lit off their engines at full burn, moving directly towards the transports. A moment later, the two lead craft fired a salvo of slow-moving missiles.

Her gut told her what was coming, but the simple-and-reliable VI controlling the GARDIAN systems of the escorts fell for it. When automated laser fire hit the projectiles, they exploded into dense clouds of metal chaff and water vapor.

The Turian fighters were now shielded from the point-defense weapons of the escorts ahead of them. That left only one option.

Captain Sanvir mashed the button to message her frigate escort. "All ships reverse course and rush those fighters! Full burn!" Releasing the button, she felt her stomach lurch as her command chair rotated in a half-circle, now facing aft. The deafening blaring of the acceleration alarm didn't help the familiar nausea at all.

After three seconds of alarm, gravity _shifted_. In the hollow core of the _Nefrane_ , powerful Eezo fields clamped over the aft-facing hole a split-second before a veritable flood of anti-hydrogen poured into the central cavity. Meeting a precisely-measured equal stream of hydrogen gas, the hollow core was instantly transformed into a colossal thruster.

A plume of super-heated exhaust raced forwards, hundreds of meters long. The _Nefrane_ rocketed backwards at hundreds of Thessia-standard gravities, pressing the crew into their seat-backs. Even with the assistance of the straining artificial-gravity system, Captain Sanvir felt her chest compress under nearly twenty gees of effective acceleration.

While the crew were effectively incapacitated, the GARDIAN systems were not. As the ships closed the range, the more-accurate laser fire began to pick off more of the fighters. Try as they might, even the fastest of Turian fighters couldn't out-accelerate an Asari warship at full military thrust.

Just as the last of the fighters were neutralized by the converging escorts, another swarm of purple markers erupted onto the tactical screen.

 _So that's where the other ships were._

The Turian cruiser _Ariminum_ led twelve frigates, followed by the escort carrier _Tarraco_. The formation dropped out of FTL barely a thousand kilometers away from the _Nefrane_ , and opened fire immediately.

Unlike the GARDIAN-focused Asari frigates, even the smaller Turian frigates mounted a spinal mass accelerator, and so thirteen projectiles roared through space towards the light cruiser.

Without having to be ordered, the helmswoman threw the ship into a hard turn to port, the acceleration chairs that the crew sat in rotating to compensate for the shifting g-forces. The frigate escorts similarly broke formation, even as their GARDIAN systems fired on the incoming rounds.

It wasn't enough.

Captain Sanvir only had time to flinch before the 'incoming-projectile' markers on the display overlapped with her own command.

"Vessel destroyed." Blared the ship-wide communications speakers as the simulated rounds tore through the _Nefrane_ , even as the actual low-powered training rounds were deflected harmlessly by the shields.

"Damnit." Sanvir blinked slowly, stretching in her seat to work out the kinks left by the high-g maneuvering. Around her, the rest of the bridge crew were doing the same, a few irritated mutters mixed in. The Captain keyed the all-hands channel. "Sorry girls, looks like we're sitting the rest of this one out." A quick glance at the tactical display showed the _Nefrane_ 's escort frigates racing ahead towards the Turian formation. "We get a front-seat view of Gallus getting his ass kicked, though."

Only one of the four escort frigates was 'destroyed' by the Turians' second volley, breaking formation to withdraw to a safe distance, out of the exercise. The other three used their maneuverability to get around the flanks of the slower Turian warships, exchanging point-blank GARDIAN laser fire. Here, the heavier laser armament of the rounded Asari vessels utterly decimated the Turian frigates, whose spinal cannons left little room for other armament.

In less than twenty seconds, seven angular frigates were left drifting in the void, and the cruiser _Ariminum_ was badly damaged. Only the GARDIAN-heavy escort carrier _Tarraco_ combined with a lucky shot from one of the frigates managed to force the three Asari frigates to withdraw, jumping to FTL to avoid destruction.

Out of the corner of her eye, Captain Sanvir saw her second-in-command and long-time friend, Edea T'Keras, step up beside the Captain's chair. "Looks like Captain Gallus mis-timed the strikes."

"Indeed. And as soon as the rest of the escort—"

Her words were cut off by the loud blaring of the "All clear" tone over the battlegroup-wide communications channel.

The two senior Asari looked at each other in confusion. "What on Thessia?"

The captain checked her command console. "Priority message from higher, cancelled the exercise." The console beeped insistently at her. "And there's the conference ping." She shrugged, and tapped the 'accept' icon. "Let's see what this is all about. I wanted to see Gallus get that smug grin knocked off, dammit." She relayed the visual onto the main viewscreen on the forward bulkhead.

As it happened, the first face they saw was that of Captain Gallus. "Captain Sanvir! It seems that we have been instructed to end the fun already." His mandibles shifted slightly, accentuating his smirk. "A pity; I had looked forwards to winning that wager of ours."

Eumenia leaned back in her padded seat, raising a brow-ridge. "'Winning?' From where I'm sitting, it looked like your squadron was about to be handled rather roughly when the rest of our escorts arrived." She eyed the other half of the display, next to the Turian captain. The identification code for Citadel HQ stood above the text 'Standby for connection…' over the grey background. "I think the end of the exercise _saved_ you, if anything."

"Oh, certainly my squadron was doomed. A necessary sacrifice, to draw your ships away from my fighters."

"The _destroyed_ fighters?"

" _Disabled_ fighters, dear Captain, not all _destroyed._ " Gallus's expression absolutely _radiated_ smugness now. "And eighteen _simulated_ fusion warheads on a timed detonation don't especially care whether the craft which carried them close to the target is 'neutralized.'"

"You'd still have lost your entire squadron, for the destruction of a light cruiser, a few frigates and perhaps one or two troopships."

"Perhaps. But that's a victory for me, nonetheless."

The rest of their conversation was cut-off as the transmission from HQ finally connected. Matriarch Lidanya herself looked out at them. "Captain Sanvir, Captain Gallus. You've been re-tasked." Her screen shifted to a star-map of the local relay network, highlighting one of the relay systems on the outer edge of explored space, a few days' travel from the exercise location. "You will meet up with a diplomatic team onboard the MSV _Entora_ , and escort them to the Relay 361 system."

Captain Sanvir was the first to speak. "Diplomatic team, ma'am? 361's out on the edge of nowhere."

"We've had some very interesting reports from a University of Serrice exploration team at 361. They seem to have run into a new species."

Both captains Sanvir and Gallus sat up straighter. "Really?" Both of them glanced at each other as they echoed the same response. Captain Sanvir nodded for her Turian counterpart to speak first.

"Are we to leave the transports to move back to Core space unprotected, ma'am?"

"No, they shall accompany you." Lidanya glanced at something off-screen for a few seconds. "You've got the 977th Cipritine infantry division and a training unit from the Serrice Guards." She chuckled. "With any luck, you shouldn't need them as _soldiers_ , but having a few dozen maidens on-scene should help with establishing proper contact."

Captain Sanvir frowned. "Still, is it wise to bring such a force along with a First Contact team? What impression will that leave on these aliens?"

"Given that the last First Contact in citadel space was the Yahg, I believe that our diplomatic team will feel much more at-ease with some muscle behind them."

"But that was _one time_ , compared to dozens of peaceful Contacts. Is the well-being of a few volunteer diplomats worth the risk of, well, _alienating_ these newcomers?"

Gallus retorted quickly "The eighty-three Hierarchy soldiers who were _eaten_ at Parnack were neither 'a few' nor 'volunteers.'"

Before Sanvir could respond, Matriarch Lidanya cut in. "Regardless, your instructions stand. The exploratory team reports that there was some violence initially, but it appears to have been a mis-understanding. The surviving mercenary escorts seem to have managed to de-escalate the situation. Avoid conflict if possible, but you _do_ represent the military arm of the Council. The reputation of the Citadel peoples to control any threat from smaller nations is imperative to maintaining the stand-off with the Terminus societies." She locked eyes with both captains, one after the other. "The debacle at Parnack _cannot_ be repeated."

* * *

AN1: To my knowledge, ME never showed us exactly what the bridge of an Asari warship looks like from the inside. I mean, we get some glimpses of the bridge of the Destiny Ascension in ME1, but that's not really enough to see how it's actually laid out. So, for the sake of having a clearer mental picture, I'm assuming it's laid out more-or-less like the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek TOS, with the command crew all seated rather close together, centered on the CO.

AN2: Similarly, we're never really told what the heck the design thinking was behind the shapes of most of the warships in ME. I mean, the SA and Hierarchy ships make *some* sense: the rectangular bodies of SA & Hierarchy ships hold the main weapons & reactors, while the 'wings' on the flanks are presumably less-armored outer hulls that hold the parts of the ship that aren't utterly critical to a combat vessel. However, I've never really been able to puzzle out why Asari ships are shaped as they are: 1) Why is there a great big hole right through the center of the vessel, and 2) Why do Asari cruisers & dreadnoughts have 1 or 2 'columns' sticking 'vertically' out from the ship?

My favorite part of science-fiction has always been the starships, so I'm doing my best to come up with some sort of believable (hopefully) reason behind the shapes of ME warships. Now, what we *are* told in ME is that Asari naval doctrine focuses heavily on fast-moving, hit-and-run tactics. So, I'm making up out of whole cloth the idea that the 'columns' on cruisers/dreadnoughts are massive heat-sinks, which are mounted as far as they can be from the crewed section of the vessel to minimize casualties if the (let's assume) dangerous chemicals used for heat absorption are released when hit by weapons fire. Also, the 'hole' through the center of Asari cruisers/dreadnoughts is assumed to be some sort of super-sized bi-directional propulsion unit. Since all warships in ME canon are propelled by antimatter thrusters, maybe the hole is simply a massive antimatter reaction chamber. Powerful Eezo fields (for understandable reasons, the Asari are stated in canon to have the most Eezo available within their territory) are used to direct the thrust forwards or rearwards, to let even the large cruisers & dreadnoughts accelerate rapidly in either direction.

These two assumptions (the heat-sinks and the super-thruster) would seem to fit the canon description of Asari shipbuilding focusing on mobility and alpha-strike firepower over long-term staying power. The super-thrusters allow their larger ships to remain highly maneuverable, and the heat-sinks mean that they can fire very rapidly, but for a short amount of time before withdrawing to vent heat prior to the next strike.

AN3: Part of what I'm doing with this story is to try and modify some of the grim-derp (pointlessly-dark) elements of ME into being similarly grim, but with more thought put into it. For example, as referenced in this chapter, the Quarians weren't essentially banished to slow extinction on the Migrant Fleet, but rather were relocated to (poor-quality) former Turian colonies. Of course, they're overseen by Council military forces, and are effectively an occupied state similar to that of the Krogan on Tuchanka. It always seemed dumb to me that the Council would throw the Quarians completely under the bus in canon, since this would 1) piss off millions of Asari (and possibly many other Citadel-space aliens) when their Quarian bondmates were exiled from Citadel space, and 2) pretty much deprive the Council space of any Quarian technical assistance against the Geth threat. After all, the Citadel peoples are stated to fear the Geth – why would they alienate (heh) and exile the people who have the most knowledge on how to fight them?

Note that this means that Quarians here don't have the same degree of problems with their immune systems.

AN4: Considering that in ME the Normandy 1 & 2 can "stealth" past other ships at distances where you could just about reach out a hatch and _touch_ the other ship, either the ME peoples have given up on most forms of sensors besides infrared, or there's some *seriously* advanced stealth systems on the Normandy besides her heat-sinks. So, for the sake of fun, I'm going with the idea that stealth materials (radar-absorbing, or what-have-you) are commonly used on starships in the ME universe, and that what makes the Normandy unique is that her heat sinks allow her to move around both faster and for longer than any other ship. However, slow-speed, short-duration "stealth" is available to most Citadel-space navies.

AN5: Someone may notice that I'm just naming most Turian warships after real-life Roman cities. Eh, if Bioware can just make them space-Romans, I'll gladly follow that trend. Saves me time thinking up odd alien names like I do for most of the Asari warships. Turns out that just mashing phonemes together until it sounds 'right' actually takes a bit of work.

AN6: Also, I don't especially like the canon-ME idea of humanity "inventing" the space-borne carrier. From what I can piece together from canon, the only real advantage that fighters have in space is that they're relatively inexpensive to construct. After all, according to canon, the Eezo required to build a ship is exponentially related to size, which is why dreadnoughts tend to be capped at around ~1km length. So, going with that, fighters should require very little Eezo to manufacture.

However, fighters in the ME-verse seem to have one major problem: the pilot/crew. Apparently, un-manned fighters aren't a thing for some reason (aside from the Geth, naturally), so each fighter that I've ever heard of in ME has at least one squishy organic inside of it. This is a problem for two reasons: 1) just like in real-life, the limiting factor on a fighter's maneuverability is the pilot, who turns into a messy pile of squished bits long, long before the actual machine breaks under g-forces, and 2) the smaller-size of a fighter means that it's especially hard to armor against weapons fire, so pilots are going to have a higher attrition rate than proper spacecraft crew.

Given those two, I'm not going along with Bioware's characterization of Humanity as the fighter-kings, with the Asari also making heavy use of them. Humanity in my story-verse doesn't *have* access to the sort of artificial gravity that would allow pilots to survive heavy acceleration, so *all* of the Alliance and the Unity's ships are limited to only as much acceleration as the crews can stand. The Unity *does* use fighters, but they're very sluggish and slow in sub-light compared to their Citadel counterparts.

On the other hand, I don't see the Asari as making heavy use of fighters: for one, they are stated to have more Eezo than any of the other factions, so why wouldn't they go for the more-expensive but more-efficient larger warships, and the higher attrition rates of fighter pilots doesn't seem to mesh as well with the species whose military practically _defines_ the "small, elite band of hard-to-replace experts."

However, it _does_ seem that fighters are a near-perfect match for the Turians to use. Not only are they much less Eezo-reliant (and thus much cheaper to produce), but the Turian military has a near-endless availability of manpower. I read about a year ago another author on this site who crunched the numbers on just how incredibly many soldiers the Hierarchy would have available at any given time, given their universal-conscription. I don't remember which author it was, but they can best be summarized as "the Hierarchy would be hard-pressed to _find_ something for all of these conscripts to do."

So, in my story, the Asari fleets consist of mainly a *lot* of full-up warships, especially cruisers. Meanwhile, the vast Turian armadas, which (as in canon) do much of the grunt-work of patrolling Citadel-space, focus more on the relatively-cheap fighters and frigates. That allows them to still produce the large numbers of space-borne combat craft that would allow them to patrol such a large area.


	9. Chapter 9

Unity of Mankind Chapter 9

Started: 25 January 2017

Published:

* * *

"Fucking finally!" Specialist Durand exclaimed as he all-but-threw his heavy railgun onto the mount held in-place by Private Cooper. "Why the hell do they have to make this shit so heavy?" Even as he complained, his hands quickly fixed the ninety-kilogram weapon into place, bringing the weapon computer online as Cooper slotted the box magazine into place.

"What did you expect? There's a reason the brass dropped us on this planet for the exercise. One-point-one gees won't kill you, but it makes you appreciate the mules all the more." Corporal Nilsson patted the six-legged hip-high robot that waited beside him, still covered with more than a tonne of equipment and ordnance. "They do most of the work for you, and your armor does the rest. Besides, if you didn't want to hump a cannon as heavy as you are all over some God-forsaken planet in the ass-end of nowhere, you should have joined the Marines instead."

Nilsson went back to scanning the open field in front of the team's position. The native 'trees' were more along the lines of ten-meter-tall ferns, but their 'branches' hung low enough to the ground to provide some concealment for the emplacement. Better still, the position gave them a good view of the open clearing in front of them, several hundred meters across with no usable cover.

"The Marines? Fuck no, those bastards are insane." Durand crouched behind his weapon, setting the on-board sensors to scan the clearing for movement. The 'mark-one eyeball' was still useful, but having a few more sensors on-alert never hurt. "Carrying a heavy-ass railer is one thing, going into battle carrying a hundred grams of antimatter is a whole other level of stupid."

"And they get jack-shit for armor." Added Private Cooper, from where he also looked out over the field.

"Good point, greenie."

"Hmm." Nilsson hummed his agreement. "Wouldn't help them much, though, the sorts of fights they're trained for." He glanced over to his right, visually confirming that the other railgun of his fire-team was ready as well, a dozen meters further along the 'tree'-line.

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard the theorycrafting as much as you have." Durand forced his Parisian accent to as close to a Boston accent as he could manage. "'Unity troopers have slower reactions than Human-standard, so a gung-ho Devil Dog can dance circles around them at close range.' To Hell with that, I'll take proper armor any day." He rapped one hand against the heavy breastplate he wore instead of the lighter plating on the rest of his body. "Anything less won't save those lunatics when a stray shot hits an ammo pouch and they blow up the whole city block."

Nilsson was about to respond when his helmet radio cut. "Movement, two kilometers ahead."

He quickly crouched down next to the railgun, waving for Durand and Cooper to get ready. "Copy." A moment's glance to his left over the gun showed the rest of their company lying prone or crouched behind concealment.

"All sections, full camo." The Major ordered, calmly. "Radio silence, line-of-sight only. Hold fire until ordered."

With a tap of the control panel on the back of his left forearm, Nilsson activated his own camouflage. The rest of the company faded from sight all around him, as their active-camouflage systems changed the outer surface of their armor to match the cover around them. The cooling systems of each trooper's powered armor ramped up, funneling as much heat as possible into the parts of the armor in contact with the ground, minimizing the infrared signature that could be picked up from a distance.

"Fuck, that's always weird."

"Hush, Durand." Nilsson anxiously stared out at the field ahead. Normally Unity infantry formations were better at concealment than this. That even the Company command section's specialized sensor system had spotted their opponents at two kilometers meant that they were moving fast.

And two thousand meters wasn't very much at all for Unity power armor. Nilsson unslung his coilgun and held it at the ready, barrel-down.

Not thirty seconds after the first warning, and there was movement nearly four hundred meters away on the opposite side of the clearing. Nilsson was proud that his eyes picked up the targets a split-second before Durand's railgun beeped softly, traversing slightly to bear on the targets.

Well, 'eyes' looking through the armored smart-glass of his helmet's visor. Increasing the zoom on the optics, Nilsson got his first good look at their enemy.

Twenty tall, armored figures jogged into the clearing, each one holding a railgun as large as the one that Durand crouched behind. Their armor had changed to the basic tan color that more-or-less matched the 'grass' that they strode through.

Of course, for two-and-a-half-meter tall figures, that didn't help them hide much at all. Nilsson carefully trained his coilgun on the left-most target. Not that his gun would do much at that range, but it never hurt to be ready.

The Unity soldiers weren't moving directly towards the company's position, but they were still closing the distance at a good pace. Nilsson waited for the order to fire.

Four-hundred meters.

Three-hundred-fifty.

Three-hundred.

"Fire!" Barked the major, his voice un-worried.

The sharp bark of Nilsson's coilgun was instantly drowned out by the roar of Durand's heavy railgun as it flung a training round towards the enemy down-range. A ripple of harsh cracks sounded from the lighter railguns of the company's riflemen to their left.

One of the tan-armored figures lurched to the side, falling as their armor registered the impact of the under-powered training round. Simulating the destruction wrought by an actual twenty-millimeter heavy railgun slug, the Unity trooper's armor buckled their left leg to simulate its loss.

The rest of the company's opponents snapped their railguns to their shoulders. Even at hundreds of meters of distance, even knowing that those heavy railguns were loaded with near-harmless training ammunition, Nilsson's mouth ran dry.

Even as more training ammunition glanced off their armor at non-penetrating angles, the Unity soldiers fired in one simultaneous volley.

Nilsson flinched as a training slug cut through part of the fern next to him, showering his armor with torn yellow-green plant fibers. Unity troopers were practically machines; three-hundred meters was close-range for them. He gave a moment's thanks for his armor's camouflage saving him from a hit.

Training ammunition or not, heavy railgun rounds _hurt_ even through armor.

The flat beep in his helmet alerted him to a casualty in his team. But Durand was still firing his railgun, Cooper still by his side. Nilsson glanced to his right, at the other railgun team. Private Brown was man-handling the frozen armor of Specialist Parker away from the weapon controls.

Damn. Fully-frozen armor meant a simulated lethal hit.

Nilsson kept firing at the Unity troops, even as they pumped four more volleys into the company's lines. At least no more of Nilsson's team were hit, although he dropped prone after the second volley managed to ricochet a shot off of Durand's railgun's gun-shield in a shower of smart-paint.

As he slotted another magazine into his coilgun, he listened to the company-wide radio messages.

"One more down, on the left!"

"Rifles, focus third-from right! Third-from-right, dammit!"

His coilgun once more ready to fire, Nilsson rose up slightly to regain line-of-sight.

Their heavy railguns blowing out a cloud of evaporated coolant, the remaining Unity soldiers ducked prone. Reloading.

Nilsson frowned. It wasn't like the disciplined Unity infantry to all run their magazines dry at the same time.

"Eyes open, something's— Shit!" He flinched as a round flattened itself against his left upper-arm armor. As his arm went numb from the impact, the armor reacted to the hit by having that arm go utterly limp.

He pressed himself further into the ground, trying to get out of line-of-sight from whoever had shot him. Not a fatal hit, and at least the armor didn't _fully_ simulate the debilitating pain of a shot that would certainly have removed his arm at the shoulder. The numbness was bad enough, the pins-and-needles that would come later, worse.

Ahead of him, Private Cooper glanced back as he slotted another magazine into place on the railgun. "Are you alright, sir?"

Nilsson was about to respond when he saw several small puffs of smoke appear up in the sky over the private's shoulder.

Air-burst munitions.

"Down!"

Not a moment after his shout, the ground around him came alive with hundreds of puffs of soil, as the non-lethal fragmentation rounds rained onto their position. Cooper cried out and froze completely, as Durand ducked further behind the mass of his railgun.

And Nilsson's right leg went numb. Shit.

He awkwardly pulled himself closer to the railgun using both of his still-functioning limbs. The small gun-shield was the only real cover he had against overhead weapons fire.

If only the company had reached their position earlier, with time to dig-in properly.

Another hail of shots peppered the ground, and another. Nilsson tried to make himself as small of a target as possible, pressing into the ground alongside Durand. Beside them, their mule sunk to the ground with a drawn-out whine of servos.

Nilsson knew the Unity troopers would be taking the opportunity to close with their position, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

After a few seconds without more impacts, the two soldiers shot back to their positions. Well, Durand 'shot' back, at least: the lucky bastard didn't appear to have been hit by anything yet. Nilsson flopped awkwardly up to a position where he could see ahead of the company.

Less than fifty meters away, seventeen Unity soldiers sprinted towards them, dashed black smudges on their armor the only evidence of the company's earlier fusillade. The tan giants _really_ wanted to take this position.

" _Merde!_ " cried Durand, shocked back to his native French. He squeezed the firing studs of the railgun, aiming more by looking over the gun-shield than with the targeting optics.

Nilsson lifted his coilgun over the edge of the gun-shield one-handed. Squeezing the trigger, he let its staccato barks signal his agreement. The muzzle of his gun jumped and bucked, spraying the rest of his fifty-round magazine in the rough direction of the closing enemy.

The halting of the steady beat of recoil alerted him to the empty magazine more than the insistent beeping in his helmet did. But how he was supposed to reload one-handed was more of a mystery.

Dropping his coilgun, Nilsson crouched down and reached for the service pistol clamped to his right thigh. Not much use against powered armor, but at least it was something.

By the lessened cacophony coming from his left, it sounded like the rest of the company was having as rough of a time as he was. At least his railgun teams had gun-shields to give them some cover to go with their armor's concealment.

At the worst possible moment, Durand's railgun also fell silent, the empty magazine automatically detaching itself and dropping away.

Nilsson finally got his pistol out of its holster as Durand frantically leaned over to grab the next spare magazine from where it laid next to Cooper's still form. They could now feel the rhythmic thumping of the ground beneath them as the heavy Unity infantry closed on their position.

Very close, now.

He brought his pistol up, aiming just over the gun shield. Seeing a tan helmet appear over the edge, he laid the sights on-target and squeezed the trigger.

The ten-millimeter shot left the muzzle, recoil kicking his arm up. The training projectile crossed the five-meter distance to its target in an instant.

And ricocheted off the rounded top of the trooper's helmet, flying off into the sky harmlessly.

Durand only had a moment to glance up before a heavy railgun round pancaked into his heavy breastplate, locking his armor and throwing him backwards.

Nilsson fired another shot, which flattened ineffectually against the casing of the enemy's railgun.

He struggled to bring the pistol back down on-target, as the Unity trooper brought their weapon to bear on him.

He lost.

In a heartbeat, Nilsson found himself flat on his back, the breath forced out of his lungs by the impact.

"Bang." The mechanical tone imparted by her helmet's speakers was unable to entirely hide the amusement in the woman's voice.

With his armor fully locked, Nilsson could not respond, try as he might to extend his middle fingers. Exercise or not, training rounds at point-blank range _hurt_. And unlike those smug Unity assholes, _he_ couldn't turn off his body's pain signals at-will.

Heavy footfalls receded into the distance, as he lay there without anything to do but watch the clock in his HUD tick slowly past. At least once his company was fully overrun, their armor would un-lock and they could shuffle off the field.

Wouldn't help their pride, though. Nearly two hundred SA soldiers lost, for maybe a dozen or so Unity casualties. About the expected relative rates for a straight-up infantry exchange.

Unfortunately, the dense plant life that covered the exercise area on this misbegotten planet meant that the SA army couldn't make full use of the armored vehicles that were meant to even out the exchange rates.

After a few minutes of listening to the steadily-lessening clatter of weapons fire, Nilsson's armor finally unlocked. He gingerly sat up, stretching to get the last of the numbness out.

"Well, that sucked." Private Cooper was the first to speak.

"Yeah." Nilsson breathed out.

Surprisingly, Durand didn't seem put-out at all. He clapped the younger private on the back. "At least you're not all-green anymore! You've been out on the front-line of an overrun position! And you did well for your first bath in the shit!"

Cooper looked down, embarrassed. "Well, it wasn't like it was a _real_ gunfight. I mean, that was more like an intense simulator fight, and I've been doing those since I was ten."

Durand laughed loudly as he turned to check his railgun for any damage. "Well, you chose the right career, then! This sort of shit is all we do!"

Nilsson nodded slowly. "And with any luck it's the closest we'll get to an honest-to-God shooting war, too." He stood up, walking over to check the other railgun team in his section.

The thrill of a good fight was quite addictive, but it did little to cover up the sinking feeling of watching bullets bounce off of a mountain of tan-painted steel aiming a railgun back at him.

* * *

Less than an hour later, and the casualties from fight were trucked off the exercise field. At least some fifty of the company's soldiers had managed to disengage from the Unity attack, and were still participating in the exercise.

Better still, some fifteen Unity soldiers were riding off-field with the two-hundred casualties from Nilsson's company. His comrades must have done better than he had thought.

He leaned back in the seat within the cramped APC's hull, futilely trying to get comfortable. The rumble of the vehicle's heavy wheels was quite soothing, especially knowing that they were taking him back to the forward operating base that he'd left over a week ago when the exercise started.

Short of anything better to do, he linked his helmet optics to one of the dorsal cameras on the APC. The waving grasses and fern-trees of this planet really _were_ rather easy on the eyes, if you weren't relying on them to stop incoming fire.

The other nineteen Alliance APCs rolled along the cleared path through the forest, the soot-covered ground evidence of the fire-bombing that had cleared the 'road' back when the planet was first selected for training.

And if the Unity troopers hadn't quite camouflaged fully with the yellow-green plant life earlier, their tan armor _really_ stood out against the charred foliage. Just behind Nilsson's APC at the rear of the Alliance convoy, three Unity APCs trundled along.

He frowned. 'APC' wasn't quite the right word, although the Unity used them like the Alliance used their M27 Kitefins. The smaller Unity vehicles had armor plating over the front-mounted engine, but the crew compartment behind it was entirely un-protected. He could see the six troopers sitting in each APC, their backs together along the vehicle's centerline, rifles held vertically between their knees.

With a shrug, he turned the camera back to the scenery. It wasn't like the exposed troopers didn't still each have as much armor protecting them as he did inside his APC, after all.

"Corp! Corp!" Someone nudged his shoulder. "Hey, Ibrim!"

Nilsson reset his helmet optics, showing that Durand had leaned across the troop compartment towards him. "Yeah?"

"You got any directives on what we'll all be doing once we get back to base? Until the exercise is done?"

Ibrim shook his head. "Haven't heard anything from higher other than getting our weapons back to the armory and the rest of our kit over to Maintenance."

"Hell." Durand sat back down. "That sounds like another few days of painting the walls every morning and washing them down every evening."

"Bulkheads, not walls."

"Just means we have a bunch of no-use sailors breathing down our necks all the while."

"Hmm."

Just then, the APC commander keyed the vehicle-wide radio. With an exaggeratedly friendly voice, she announced "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. If you would direct your attention to the dorsal camera, you will see our _lovely_ home-away-from-home for the next few days."

Durand chuckled, and added on a private channel "The Mechanized folks aren't any happier about getting kicked back to base than the rest of us. I heard they got completely _flattened_ by Unity heavy armor a bit before it was our turn."

"Sounds like they didn't do any better without the tanks than we did." Nilsson tapped a fist against his helmet visor to indicate that he was switching back to the vehicle's external camera.

Now fixed facing forward, it showed the crest of the hill that their APC was about to go over. With the last of the day's weak sunlight at their back, they crested the hill just in time to see the base's lights turn on.

Three starships lay nestled together in a rough triangle, each side over four hundred meters long. The Alliance Heavy Troop Landers _Pitt_ and _Gambetta_ in their white-and-blue paint stood as a counterpart to the gold-and-blue of the Unity Heavy Lander _Saladin_.

"I still say whoever named a flying barracks the ' _Pitt_ ' was an idiot." Commented Durand on the two friends' private channel.

"It's named after some prime minister or another, computer-picked like the rest of her class."

"Still a stupid name. 'Oh, what fun! We get to go back to the _Pitt_!'"

"Would you rather be sleeping outside in the rain?"

"We're on a whole different planet than where we were born, man. It just doesn't seem right to sleep between the same steel walls that we see everywhere else we go."

"You've got a point, there. I'll be happy with a soft, warm bed, though."

"Yeah, something to be said for that."

A few minutes later, and the convoy rolled to a halt in the large clearing formed between the looming bulks of the three ships.

The rear hatches slammed open. "All right you mud-kickers, out of my track! It's gonna take hours to hose the mess out, now."

The infantry piled out of the APC, chuckling. One of the grunts — not one that Ibrim knew — laughed a "Yes, mom!" as she clambered out of the vehicle.

Nilsson helped the rest of his weapons team to grab their railguns and mules off of the racks on the rear deck of the APC, and then waved for them to follow him away from the milling crowds of other troops disembarking from their vehicles. "All right everyone, get your gear turned in and meet up by the mess hall when you're done. I'll let you know when the higher-ups give us our next assignments."

His troops nodded before heading off on their assigned tasks. He himself took a moment to lean back against the hull of the _Pitt_ , the vast bulk of the rectangular transport warm to the touch. One of the perks of being a section leader was that the coilgun that he had been issued was as near to maintenance-free as modern engineering could make it. So while the rest of his team got to deal with the trolls over at the armory vaults, he got to keep his coilgun folded away at his hip.

His rest was interrupted by the stuttering hum of a shuttle approaching the 'base' from above. Glancing up, he saw a UT-39 Polar flare its four glowing impeller pods as it passed over the _Saladin_ , before landing softly in front of the _Pitt_.

Out of the shuttle's hatch stepped an Alliance Navy officer, bright-red hair just barely sticking out of her dark-blue billed cap.

Nilsson counted the three gold bars on her shoulder-pads and straightened up from his slouch against the hull. Army troops weren't required to salute superiors when deployed, but that didn't mean he'd look slovenly in front of a Captain.

The officer walked past him, into the open hangar bay of the _Pitt_. A moment later, she came back out, looking around. Seeing the unit number on Ibrim's left shoulder, she turned to him. "Corporal, do you know when your company CO will be back?"

"The major, ma'am?" Nilsson pointed over to the crowd still milling around the APCs. Despite their weight, his team's heavy railguns were actually easier to detach from their on-vehicle storage than the longer-barreled railguns that the riflemen carried. "He's probably still getting his kit from the transports, ma'am. He should be over in a — actually, here he comes now."

The Navy officer turned as the major jogged up to her, removing his helmet. Regulation or not, he crisply saluted the Captain, although Ibrim thought he saw a corner of the man's mouth tick upwards in a half-grin. "Captain Shepard."

Shepard's voice _definitely_ had some amusement in it as she returned the salute. "Major Shepard."

Ah. Nilsson had heard that his company CO was married to a Navy officer. Lucky bastard got to see her even on deployment.

Meanwhile, the major had continued "So, what's so urgent you had to fly down instead of call? Couldn't wait to see my ugly mug again?"

Ibrim started edging away from the conversation, slowly making his way around the corner of a parked APC. He stopped just out of sight, though. His enlisted-sense was tingling: the commander of the Navy training squadron doing their own exercises in the system wouldn't stop by to see an Army commander _just_ to make small talk with her significant other.

"We're finishing up upstairs, got new orders from Arcturus. I reckon you'll get your exercise called off in an hour or so. Army's always slower than the Navy, after all."

The major laughed. "Can't argue that our bureaucracy isn't worse, no. At any rate, what's the cause? Higher got a wild hair up their ass again?"

"Maybe, maybe not." The Captain lowered her voice, and Ibrim had to strain to make out her next words. "My orders said that some exploration and mapping team out poking around some Artifacts on the edge of known space ran into someone."

"Someone?"

"Someone as in _'First Contact'_ someone!" Captain Shepard's voice rose slightly in excitement.

"Really? Well I'll be damned. Now I _really_ hope it isn't just some joker at HQ getting excited over a false-alarm again."

"Amen. I figured it would be more fun to tell you face-to-face. If it's real, this'll really be the event of a lifetime! I half-wish little Janie were here. Danger or no, she'd really enjoy the excitement."

Carefully, Ibrim snuck further away from the two officers. He'd heard enough to get his adrenaline going. Hastily opening a private channel to Durand, he started speaking as soon as the connection was made. "Looks like you won't be bored at-base after all, man. You won't _believe_ what I just overheard…"

* * *

AN1: Okay, I showed a fun exercise between two Citadel navies, now here's a training fight between the two branches of humanity, with System Alliance army versus Unity ground forces. Not *really* plot significant, mostly world-building and showing off some of the cool gear that they've got. After all, I gave the Asari kick-ass Eezo-contained antimatter afterburners, so it's really only fair that the SA army get active camouflage.

Of course, the Unity infantry are a cross between Tau fire-warriors and Rubric Marines. They're cool enough already.

AN2: One of the other things I'm doing on purpose in this story is writing most of the human characters as speaking more-or-less the same dialect of English, regardless of where they're actually from. I mean, in real life it's been noticed that regional accents (of English) around the world are 'softening' more and more with the rise of mass-market television and especially with the proliferation of the internet.

Couple that with the noted spread of the English language around the world, extend both trends forward another ~140 years, and I would think that there wouldn't be that much difficulty in any two humans understanding each other, from anywhere in the world. Of course, as with most predictions about the future more than ~5 years ahead, it's really just a shot in the dark, but I think it's an interesting idea.

So if you're wondering why Nilsson from Sweden and Durand from Paris speak in more-or-less the same way, that's why.

AN3: Also, Meet the Shepards! Two of them on-stage already (so to speak), and our future heroine mentioned in passing!


	10. Chapter 10

Unity of Mankind, Chapter 10

Started: 7 February 2017

Published: 15 February 2017

* * *

 **Twenty-five hours after Contact:**

Matriarch Sulita frowned at the Batarian in front of her. "It would still be vastly preferable for your second frigate to take a higher orbit above this planet. It is of no help to anyone down here, especially after the _Ked'Vash_ had to depart the system."

Those thuggish mercenaries couldn't be trusted around a delicate First Contact situation, especially after they'd already exchanged fire with these 'Humans.' Of course, saying that to their captain's face wouldn't accomplish anything.

Captain Hadd-vosh's response was unchanged. "It is still standard Suns procedure to place the safety of our clients above all other considerations. I cannot in good faith leave your mostly-unarmed team alone with a previously-hostile alien military group."

"And from what little we've managed to communicate thus far, it's clear that _it was an accident_. Haelina's managed to get enough of a translation going to get _that_ much across."

"But unexpected developments _do_ happen, and it's on my head to uphold my contract if they do." He abruptly switched tack. "For that matter, we would not be in this situation if an _unexpected development_ had not required the _Ked'Vash_ to evacuate one of your scientists back to Citadel Space."

"And I truly appreciate your taking Ms. T'Seras back for medical treatment, but nonetheless I must insist that you move the _Eboracum_ to a position further from the planet." She fixed Hadd-vosh with a stare. "I do sign your paycheck for this operation."

"No, ma'am, you signed the _contract_ for my team before this mission started. That contract included the specification for close-level protection of your people for the duration of the operation until our safe return to Citadel Space. My paycheck is contractually protected so long as I operate within the bounds of the document, which does not allow for the civilian team leader to make decisions about the deployment of tactical assets against the judgement of the on-site Suns lead officer."

Sulita felt her brow rise in surprise. She hadn't expected to get the minutiae of the mercenary's contract parroted back at her, let alone by a Batarian. She'd have expected it from that Turian captain what's-his-name, or maybe a Volus who managed to stumble into the Suns' ranks.

She glanced across the open Prothean hangar, where the first rays of sunrise were just reaching where her team's linguistics expert, Haelina Veras, sat talking to one of the humans. The datapads scattered around them displayed a number of already-established translations, with the neat, simple letters of the Standard Citadel Alphabet matched alongside the more elaborately-detailed script used by the Humans.

The matriarch smirked. It was obvious enough from the letters alone that these humans had not encountered any other aliens before now. Their alphabet could be hand-written by an Asari easily enough, to be sure, but some of the finer details on their letters would challenge the less-flexible fingers of a Turian, let alone a pressure-suited Volus.

Of course, if this was the absolute First Contact for the humans, it was especially important that nothing more go wrong. She tried a different angle. "But isn't keeping the ship in-atmosphere more dangerous? We're deep in the Terminus systems, so isn't there a greater danger of raiders or pirates coming through the relay? The _Eboracum_ would be more useful as a lookout posted where she can see out of the atmosphere." Another thought struck her. "Goddess, we won't even know when the Citadel envoys arrive until they reach orbit! We would need more time than that to warn the humans that more ships were arriving. At the rate the translation is going, we'll barely be able to communicate that sort of warning by then."

"You have a point about the lookout, ma'am, which is why the _Ked'Vash_ left a sensor buoy by the relay when she departed." The captain gestured towards the other side of the bay. "If you're concerned about the translation speed, all I can suggest is to have one of your students link minds with one of the humans and grab their language directly."

"Melds only work that way in cheesy 'vids." Sulita snorted. "Until we get a better understanding of their language, at least."

"As you say." The Batarian glanced to his side, where one of his troops had signaled for his attention. "If you'll excuse me, ma'am."

The matriarch waved him off before turning to face the rest of the team. As expected, the Asari team members were crowded as close as they dared to where Haelina was working. Unfortunately, their curiosity did not seem to be infectious: the Suns mercenaries stood well back from the conversation, clumped together defensively. Their near-hostile demeanor was only matched by the other human soldiers, who stood opposite of their position.

Sulita grimaced. Regardless of what she'd told Captain Hadd-vosh, she hoped the Citadel team arrived as soon as possible. A neutral third party was very definitely needed before this got out of hand.

* * *

Captain Wasea D'Keras drummed her fingers impatiently on the armrest of her chair. "Anything more?"

"No, ma'am." Responded her Salarian communications tech. "Looks like our man was discovered."

"Damn." She sat up, glancing around the bridge of the _Vareya_. A decommissioned Asari heavy cruiser, she was one of the most powerful warships available to Eclipse.

But also one of the most valuable. Which made it all the worse that the informant they'd planted among the Blue Suns hadn't reported anything more than 'a valuable find.' The agent was _supposed_ to get them the force count and security codes for the Suns escorts, so that Wasea and her people could swoop in and grab whatever valuable artifact the Serrice archaeological team had found.

She gazed at the main bridge display, which focused on the relay to the system in question. If the eggheads really _had_ found a Prothean relic, it could be worth a great deal to whomever would want to buy it from Eclipse. On the other hand, it might not be worth risking the _Vareya_ against an unknown number and class of Blue Suns warships. Even worse, the refitted heavy cruiser _was_ a rather distinctive vessel, one of the largest privately-owned warships allowed to operate in Citadel space. If she had to rough-up an official team straight from the Homeworld, she didn't want it traced back to Eclipse.

Wasea made her decision, and stood from her chair. "Take us through the relay. Ground teams, shuttle over to the _Novaesium_. We'll take her further in-system, leave the _Vareya_ guarding the relay." The ex-Hierarchy frigate was one of the most ubiquitous warship classes in the universe. It wouldn't be recognized.

She turned to face the ship's second-in-command, the Salarian drawing himself up as straight as his scrawny species could. "Bon, you've got the ship until I get back." The ship shifted under her as the relay flung the two mercenary vessels towards their destination. "Anything comes through the relay after us, you blow them out of the sky. But don't risk the ship — you know what'll happen if you lose her."

Without waiting for a response, she strode off of the bridge towards the central elevator. Her bodyguards followed her, the two loyal commandoes taking up positions just inside the elevator. As soon as the door closed, Wasea spoke, calmly. "Adira, Loyena. You two stay on the _Vareya._ Make sure Bon remembers whose ship it is."

"You're just taking the expendables down with you, ma'am?"

Wasea snorted in amusement. "They're competent-enough fighters, at least in a group. I need you two here. Bon's too ambitious for his own good, and I don't trust him not to get 'inventive' with his orders." Letting out a laugh, she clapped Loyena on her armored shoulder. "Besides, child, I've been kicking the Suns around since before you were born. If our new recruits don't measure up, I'll pick up the slack."

* * *

Corporal Nilsson sat down at the mess table, watching the two privates from his section argue.

"Acorn."

"Zeppelin."

Specialist Durand sat down at the table across from Ibrim. After a few seconds of silently listening in, he chuckled. "Oh, please. We all know what they _really_ look like."

Nilsson frowned. "What on Earth are you all on about?"

The two privates jumped, turning around to see Durand and Nilsson. After a quick salute that Ibrim waved off, Private Taylor explained. "We were arguing as to what the ships look like, sir." She held up a datapad in one hand, showing the image of the SSV _Moscow_ , taken from one of the external cameras along the _Pitt_ 's hull. "This Yankee" Taylor hooked a thumb over to point at Private Cooper "says they look like acorns, when clearly they're more of a flattened airship."

A frown fought with a grin for room on Ibrim's face as he turned to Cooper. The grin won. "What kind of acorns have _you_ been looking at, Lumberjack?"

The American-born soldier let out a comically-overdone sigh. "Yankees are from New England, not California. _You_ of all people should know that, limey." While Taylor brought a hand to her chest in mock outrage, he continued. "Besides, _real_ acorns are narrower than those walnut-looking things you're all thinking of. Coastal oaks are the only ones worth mentioning."

Ibrim looked back at Taylor's datapad. "I'm going to have to side with the Brit on this one. That's a flattened zeppelin." He turned to glance at Durand, who was fighting back laughter. "You've got an opinion, I take it?"

The Frenchman cackled. "Oh, please, you all know what I'm thinking. What else is a hard, tapered cylinder that comes to a rounded point at one end? C'mon Lumberjack, you've always told us how you were a _wood_ sman before enlisting!"

The other soldiers exchanged a look before Cooper punched Durand on the shoulder. "You're a goddamn _child_ , man."

While the two friends descended into a half-hearted brawl, Ibrim turned back to Taylor. "So, if the warships are zeppelins, that makes us" he tapped the deck plating with one boot "what, a flying brick?"

"I reckon that's about it. Maybe a half-melted brick. I guess a sharp-cut brick was too ugly even for the Army to accept."

"Heh. Here, let me borrow that." Nilsson reached for the datapad, and scrolled the view over to face forwards from the _Pitt_. The rest of their small squadron could be seen, waiting immobile in space. Even the twelve-hundred-meter-long bulk of the Alliance and Unity cruisers was dwarfed by the alien construct that floated in the void ahead of them. "So, for our next oh-so-important topic, what do the Artifacts look like? My vote's for 'chopsticks.'"

Taylor shrugged. "More like a weird-ass tuning fork to me."

As they watched, two ships detached themselves from the formation and approached the Artifact. Two quick taps at the screen revealed them to be the Alliance Civil-War-class frigate SSV _Fredericksburg_ and the Unity Province-class cruiser UWS _Shanxi_.

"Looks like the Navy boys are going first." Ibrim commented. "Not sure if I wish it were us, instead."

"First Contact, you mean?"

At the mention of the phrase, both Durand and Cooper ceased their fighting and leaned over the table, re-joining the conversation.

Ibrim nodded at them before answering. "Yeah. God only knows that we're all thinking about it."

"Agreed." Cooper's voice was excited. "Who knows what they might look like? Intelligent life from an utterly different ecosystem than us? Can we even imagine what they look like?"

"I sure as hell can!" responded Durand.

"Bad science-fiction movies don't count, geek-boy." The grin in Taylor's voice belied her admonishment.

"Bah! I'm still holding out for those green-skinned space babes. They have to be out there _somewhere_!" The Frenchman laughed.

Ibrim chuckled along. "Just you wait. You'll come face-to-face with some three-meter-tall alien spider from Gamma-Cephei-Eight or whatever. Good luck with that."

Durand's grin only grew. "And I'll still make a pass at it!"

"You would." Taylor clapped a hand to her face.

Just then, the datapad display flashed with light, as the Artifact hurled the two human warships out of sight in a heartbeat.

Ibrim slowly nodded, gaze fixed on the space where the two ships had been. His voice was serious as he intoned, "Well, it looks like we'll find out sooner-or-later."

* * *

Captain Sanvir paced back and forth in her cabin, muttering. "Where in the Goddess' name are those damned diplomats? Their ship should have been here hours ago!"

"And worrying won't make them arrive any faster." Edea T'Keras calmly answered.

Eumenia stopped her pacing and sighed. "I know, dammit, but still. Is it too hard for those empty-headed word-smiths to actually keep to the schedule that they themselves set?"

"You said it yourself. They're diplomats. Civilians. Nothing in their job description requires perfect punctuality."

"Yeah." Eumenia grunted back, before dropping to sit on the couch next to T'Keras. "And to think they're the 'face' of all Asari. The ones that every alien pictures when they think of our people."

Edea reached over to the low table in front of the couch and poured a second cup of tea. Handing it over to Eumenia, she smiled as she grabbed her own cup. "That's life, I suppose. At least it's those same diplomats who make sure the Turians keep doing the boring work for us."

At that moment, the communicator for the Captain's cabin chimed softly from the desk near the middle of the room. Striding over to it, Eumenia tapped the 'accept' button. "Yes?"

"The diplomats' ship has arrived, ma'am. Their leader wishes to speak with you."

"I see. I'll be right out." She ended the call before glancing back to the table with her interrupted lunch on it. After a few seconds' thought, she shrugged and grabbed her food and drink. She'd finish them on the bridge. The diplomats had made her wait through her normal rest period, so they could damn well deal with a bit of discourtesy on her part. In fact…she grinned and nodded to Edea. "You go ahead and finish up here. I'll see what they want."

Her long-time friend raised one brow-ridge inquisitively. "You're really going to rub their noses in it, aren't you?"

"Not my fault half our crew was kept waiting through their lunch break." Her grin shifted into a smirk. "Don't worry, I won't spell it out for them _that_ blatantly."

"I should hope not. Did you learn _all_ of your manners from your father?"

Pausing just inside the cabin hatch, Eumenia raised her hand in a rude gesture over her shoulder towards her friend. "Hey, at least I can't head-butt them when they're on a different ship. Besides, you know full well my dear older sister got all the 'manners' from dad."

The other Asari snorted. "I _know_. She's somehow even worse than you."

It was with a wide grin that Captain Sanvir stepped through the hatch onto the bridge. It disappeared immediately when she saw who was projected on the main screen at the front of the compartment. "I did not know C-FLEET was taking an interest in the operation, commodore…"

"T'Leran." The blue-and-black uniformed Asari answered crisply. "Our presence was requested directly by the Diplomatic Corps."

And it must have taken an Act of the Goddess herself to get C-FLEET _this_ far out from the Citadel. Eumenia carefully kept her face neutral. "I see." She strode over to her captain's chair, setting her food in her lap as she sat down. A glance at the tactical plot had her fighting to keep a frown off of her features. _Two_ C-FLEET heavy cruisers? They were out in the Terminus systems, for the Goddess's sake? Were they _trying_ to start a war? "Has there been an update on the condition of the archaeological team we are to meet?" It was the only reason she could think of for this insanity.

"The initial Contact report mentioned that there had been some violence on the newcomer's part, so we were dispatched to help make the…'proper' impressions." The C-FLEET commodore continued in her infuriating upper-class Armali accent. "My ships will be first into the system, to ensure the proper _civilities_ are met." Her gaze flickered downward momentarily, and Eumenia self-consciously adjusted the food tray in her lap. This wasn't exactly the 'be rude to a diplomat' fun she had been hoping for.

"With all due respect, commodore, we in the Expeditionary forces have more experience at dealing with foreign cultures than C-FLEET does. It may be for the best to have a less…"—arrogant—" _impressive_ force enter the system first."

"Nonsense." Commodore T'Leran narrowed her eyes at Eumenia. "I have been an officer at C-FLEET since my maiden years, child. I suspect that I have worked alongside more Turians than you've _met_."

"Those are Turians, ma'am. They're not, well, _foreign_. Not every culture responds well to having a large military force dumped into a standoff. And if those 'heavy cruisers' of yours grew even half-a-meter, they'd have to re-classify them as dreadnoughts."

"Then all the better for their ability to make a statement." T'Leran leaned forward slightly towards the video pickup. "I am aware that the Expeditionary forces are trained not to step on any toes out beyond the edges of civilization, but the Citadel remains the foremost power in this galaxy. The last time we made First Contact, that message was not communicated properly. We are here to fix that error." She leaned back in her chair. "The combined squadrons will move out immediately. We were behind schedule leaving the Citadel already, so we shall proceed to the destination system with all available speed."

* * *

Lieutenant Zheng blinked rapidly as the sharp headache slowly drained out from her skull. God _damn_ but using Artifact travel hurt. Something about that alien tech kept re-setting every Communication system on a Unity ship whenever they were relayed through.

At least the ship had a few minutes before it arrived at the destination Artifact, enough for the ship to be back in working order by the time they got there. With a sigh, Zheng pinged the _Shanxi_ 's Communications system. Still re-booting.

With nothing else to do, she physically moved her head to look around the small compartment that she was in. _Maybe I *have*_ _been in the Navy too long_ she thought as her neck creaked, unaccustomed to such movement. The dimly-lit room was cramped, with the emergency life-support systems taking up nearly a third of the available space. Her 'Crewman Containment Unit,' universally termed a 'sarcophagus' took up another third, leaving barely a quarter of the compartment as free space.

Not that it was needed for much normally, but with the whole ship down for a minute it wasn't like she could leave the sarcophagus easily. The emergency release was rather… _permanent_ with regards to damaging the expensive equipment. Explosive bolts tended to have that effect.

Finally, the transparent dome of her sarcophagus filled once more with the comforting glow of the backup data displays. The faint tickle at the base of her skull opened up once more into an all-consuming buzz that swiftly filled her mind. One final, loud 'click' inside her mind, and she was back to being _crew_ of the _Shanxi_ , not just a very bored passenger stuck inside a too-small room.

Judging from the 'feel' of the thoughts from the rest of the crew she could feel re-joining the Network around her, she wasn't the only one for whom two minutes of silence had been too much. How _had_ she coped when she was younger, before she joined the Unity?

Captain Hall's thoughts spread out across the Network, quieting the grumbles from the other two-hundred-odd crew. Zheng felt a flicker of amusement. For that matter, how had _he_ lived before the Unity? He was a late-joiner, like her, but had taken to it like a fish to water. It all still felt a bit strange to her, some times.

The Captain's thoughts intensified, her neural implants turning the intent into words fed directly into her brain's language centers. "Department check. Everyone all right?"

"Engineering, all good."

"Weapons, all good."

"Sensors, all green."

"Damage-control, all good."

"Flight ops, all birds unharmed."

Now it was Zheng's turn. After a quick diagnostic of the controls she was monitoring, she carefully switched her Communications suite to broadcast. "Helm still answers. All good."

The other department heads checked in. No damage to the ship. Nothing lasting, at least.

Zheng flicked a query over to the navigation systems. "Thirty seconds until estimated Artifact-tunnel exit."

"Understood. Engineering, keep the reactors hot. We don't know what we'll find on the other side. Flight ops, keep your birds ready to launch at a moment's notice."

"Aye, sir. We've got two scout birds and a strike flight loaded in the tubes, ready to go."

Zheng mentally nodded, feeling the excitement run through her body. _This_ was the sort of adventure that had led her to apply for Unity induction. She checked the time-to-arrival counter once more.

Twenty-eight seconds.

She almost regretted the time-perception dilation from Unity implants. Who knew that thirty seconds could last so long? She ran through another few diagnostics on the helm controls, and then pinged a few short conversations back and forth with the other crew. She wasn't the only one having trouble waiting.

Nineteen seconds.

Oh, for goodness' sake. She helped the Sensors team check through their equipment one more time. Still no faults that the diagnostics could find.

Twelve seconds.

What else could she do? After a moment's thought, she mentally chided herself. She'd want to _remember_ how exciting this was, later! Two more real-time seconds were spent ensuring that her thought-patterns were being copied to the greybox mounted in the back of her skull. That way, she could share the fun with her friends back home when they got back!

She keyed her suite to the all-hands broadcast once more. "Ten seconds until arrival."

With a distinct mental effort, she managed to keep from exploding with impatience for the last few seconds.

Arrival.

The UWS _Shanxi_ exited the Artifact, the alien machinery slowing the massive heavy cruiser down to a near-stop relative to the device. Thankfully, the spike of interference wasn't as bad when a Unity ship exited an Artifact pair, so it only took a few seconds for the sensors to come back online.

The first thing they saw was the SSV _Fredericksburg_ , floating serenely a few hundred kilometers off the _Shanxi_ 's port beam, barely five degrees up relative. Pretty impressive, considering how far the two ships had traveled in those few minutes between the Artifacts.

But what was _more_ impressive, and drew the entire crew of the Unity warship's rapt attention over to the sensor feeds, was the _other_ ship sitting quite by its lonesome two thousand kilometers beyond the _Fredericksburg_.

* * *

Meerus Bon felt his blood run cold as the proximity alarms rang out on the _Vareya_ 's expansive bridge. He hadn't expected a ship — no, two ships! — to pop out of the relay with no warning! The relay only lit up barely a second before the ships appeared, for that matter! When had _that_ ever happened before?

Fighting down the surprise, his mind started working through what he knew. Two unknown ships, shape not matching any known design groups. His eyes flicked from the visual-display repeater over to the more data-intensive readout. Size…he checked again. Size…over a _kilometer_ long? Who could _possibly_ be throwing a _dreadnought_ around out here in the Terminus? He didn't even know anyone out here _had_ a ship that size!

His mind ratcheted over to the next important topic: his orders. On the one hand, 'fire on any ship that comes through the relay.' On the other hand, 'don't lose the _Vareya_.' Now, normally he'd rather err on the side of 'don't shoot at a Wheel-forsaken _dreadnought_ when you've only got an admittedly-large heavy cruiser to fight it with.'

However, he was _very_ much conscious of those two attack varren that Wasea had left 'guarding' the back of the bridge, behind him. Loyena and, erm, someone else virtually indistinguishable from the first veteran mercenary. No way was he going to trust _those_ two trigger-happy lunatics to sensibly interpret the good Captain's orders. Anyone who had worked with Wasea for as long as those two supposedly had without quitting wasn't anyone whose mental stability Meerus would trust.

His hatchery-instructors had raised him better than that. The STG may not have taken him, but that didn't mean he was as naïve and trusting as someone not descended from the fast-thinking, slow-trusting children of Sur'Kesh.

So, how to reconcile his conflicting instructions? A moment's thought presented an answer. As the helmswoman frantically strapped herself into her acceleration chair, Bon barked "Helm! Turn to face unknown cruiser. Ready full reverse burn and FTL jump!" Half-turning, he continued "Guns! Target cruiser, all weapons! We jump after you fire!" As the _Vareya_ rotated underneath him, he hastily opened a channel to send a message to Wasea on the _Novaesium_.

That should keep him covered from any blowback. He'd only followed orders, after all.

* * *

Zheng, along with the rest of the _Shanxi_ 's crew, stared avidly at the alien vessel. It was smaller than their ship, not even as large as the _Fredericksburg_. And such a strange shape. She wasn't a trained naval architect, but she'd picked up enough through the Network from those who were that she could say that that alien ship just _didn't_ look like a spaceship. It was too narrow by half, far too much surface area per volume for adequate armoring. It seemed more like a work of art than a space-going craft.

Maybe it was an alien civilian craft? Some sort of passenger ship, shaped to draw the eye rather than deflect projectiles?

Captain Hall's presence once more spread out throughout the Network, wordlessly if insistently calling the crew back to their duties. Moment over. "Sensors, any communications you can pick up from that ship?"

"Nothing we can see, sir. We're scanning on all radio channels we can reach, and we're not getting any laser-pulse signals either. But for all we know they use something else."

Engineering chimed in, amusement coloring the officer's mind-voice. "For all we know, they're all firing telepath-mind-rays at us from over there and we're just not picking it up."

Hall's mind-glow pulsed with amusement. "Hush, you." More seriously, he added "Looks like it's up to us to start, then. Communications, you have the First Contact package loaded?"

"Aye, and about time we dusted that thing out of the databanks. It's been in there for centuries, I swear."

"Well, let's hope it works as well in practice as it did in theory all those years ago. Send the package, all radio channels. Leave the laser-transmitter off of that ship, though. They might think it to be a targeting beam."

"Aye."

Lieutenant Zheng felt a stir of pride that the _Shanxi_ 's First Contact package had been broadcasting for over five seconds before the SSV _Fredericksburg_ joined her electronic voice to the chorus. Even with a few seconds lost due to interference from the Artifact, the Unity crew had made up the time and gotten to speak first. Mostly meaningless, but it may make it into a footnote in some history book someday.

With baited breath, the whole crew of the _Shanxi_ watched the alien vessel for any sign of a response. Surely radio was a simple enough technology as to be universally-understood? The FC package was simple enough too, just a series of arithmetic sequences of digital signals. Not really 'communication' by any stretch of the imagination, but a clear signal that _communication is desired_. Hopefully that much would get through to whatever alien intelligences were looking back at the two human vessels.

Sensors was the first to see it. "Alien ship rotating, sir! She's coming about!"

After a moment, Zheng saw it too. Rapidly — very rapidly, much faster than any human ship could hope to move — the ship came about to face towards the _Fredericksburg_.

A nerve signal from deep in Zheng's gut wormed its way through the Unity cybernetics surrounding her brain. This felt… _off_.

* * *

"Firing!" called out the _Vareya_ 's weapons officer, stabbing a vacuum-suited finger down onto the master execute key on her console.

This far out from any planetary bodies, space was empty enough that the GARDIAN lasers met no matter between the two ships significant enough to cause a visible flash. But the _Vareya_ was an Asari-built warship, with a significantly-enlarged laser suite. So the image of the unidentified cruiser flashed brightly as the laser pulses impacted.

A half-second later, and the two main cannons fired, the concentrated mass-effect fields accelerating a pair of two-kilogram slugs to nearly four thousand kilometers per second.

Even before the projectiles hit their target, the _Vareya_ slammed into a full-burn five-hundred-gee acceleration away from the cruiser and dreadnought, the glowing plume of superheated exhaust racing forwards after the cannon rounds.

"FTL capacitors charging, ready to jump in ten seconds!"

Bon relaxed slightly. That was an uncomfortably long time, but it should be enough for the nimble cruiser to put enough distance between them and their target for safety.

* * *

The moment the _Shanxi_ 's sensors recognized the burst of energy from the alien vessel as a weapons discharge, Zheng felt the sharp tug on her mind as the ship's Network went to full Battle Connection. She accepted immediately, feeling her personality melt into the single whole of the crew.

The _Shanxi_ awoke.

She grimaced as the aggressor's lasers boiled the armor plating from the _Fredericksburg_ 's port flank, but her simple-minded cousin was built to weather far more harm than that.

Even as she acknowledged that the Alliance frigate had withstood the attack, her sensors focused on the alien warship detected two projectiles inbound. At four kilometers per second, they were orders of magnitude faster than any human weapon, but her gravity-field sensors estimated their mass at less than a dozen kilograms.

Perhaps not as dangerous as the _Shanxi_ 's own cannons, but certainly harder to dodge. She had a choice: act to protect the _Fredericksburg_ , or attack her enemy? She briefly queried her constituent minds, drawing upon their judgement.

The preservation of human life would take priority.

Her port-side laser arrays flexed their focusing lenses and drew from her main capacitor banks, spitting a dozen beams of ultraviolet energy towards the projectiles racing towards the _Fredericksburg_. Her focusing lenses ached with the effort of tracking such rapid targets, but she ignored the pain.

One of the two enemy rounds flashed into vapor in an instant, but the other lived a charmed life, as pulse-laser fire lanced through space only millimeters away, but never close enough to connect.

It hit the _Fredericksburg_. Human warships were armored against the sun-temperature explosions of nuclear detonations and pulse-laser fire, but a kinetic impact at such speeds was not designed for.

 _Shanxi_ flinched as the shot pierced the weakened port armor of her cousin, two hundred meters aft of her rounded bow. The hull on her starboard side opposite of the impact buckled outward almost imperceptibly, the un-broken armor there holding.

Belatedly, the organic-crewed _Fredericksburg_ began to yaw, bringing her bow around to face her attacker. The _Shanxi_ had started moving whole _seconds_ ago, but her greater bulk meant that her co-axial cannons could not yet bear on their target.

Not that it would be of much use at such range. The enemy warship was more than two-thousand kilometers away, and getting further all the time. The _Shanxi_ 's own cannon, running over a kilometer along her length, could launch an explosive shell at nearly fifty kilometers per second.

About average for a human warship, but utterly useless when her target would have over forty seconds to maneuver away. How could they _fire_ a shot that fast? She would examine the sensor data later, in hopes of finding some clue.

In the meantime, she vented her frustration by swiveling her laser arrays around to fire at the enemy. Her capacitors drained to barely three-quarters full as another staggered volley leaped through space towards her target.

They couldn't dodge _light_.

But they could diffuse it. A plume of glowing-hot gas projected outwards from the peculiar hole in the center of the alien warship, accelerating the enemy away from her at a rate the _Shanxi_ could never hope to match.

Even worse, the rocket plume was just dense enough to diffuse her laser pulses meaningfully. Instead of blasting the enemy apart with hundreds of kilotons worth of directed energy, they boiled away armor plating, charring the purple paint of her foe.

Her gravitational sensors blared at her. A moment's attention showed only that the alien vessel was…changing. The distortion in the gravitational field it caused was lessening, even as it accelerated.

Very peculiar, but all it told her was that the enemy was doing _something_. Further analysis would have to wait.

With effort, she focused her laser fire towards the strange near-cylindrical protrusion that jutted 'down' from her target's hull. It was the least-covered by the exhaust plume, and thus the most-exposed.

Even as her overtaxed laser arrays burned with temperature alarms, she fired again. The enemy could not be allowed to escape after their unprovoked attack.

A warm glow of satisfaction spread as the laser pulses were barely affected by the enemy's defensive rocket, striking home with most of their power intact. With a searing flash, the tip of the column exploded outwards in an expanding cloud of gas.

After her cameras recovered from the intense light, they registered that a chunk of hull, over twenty meters long, had been blasted off of the tip of the column. There was no detectable atmosphere leaking from the hole, but her sensors did pick up a stream of dense, near-molten metals pouring out from the wound.

That should hurt.

Her victory was-short lived, however, as her gravitational sensors blared another warning. Not a moment later, and the enemy warship simply…vanished. Only a fast-receding faint echo off of the gravitational plane remained behind.

No trace of a grav-plane puncture. No visible FTL-jump tear.

 _Shanxi_ froze in shock.

 _Real-space FTL?_ That...that…that violated _so_ many laws of physics.

She shook it off. Physics would have to change, again. Directing her attention back to her grav-sensors, she could see no trace of the enemy, the echoes having faded away. Had the aliens withdrawn?

Hopefully. But then, if they could go FTL in real-space, she wouldn't have much warning if they came back for another attack. If they didn't have to force a tunnel through the gravitational plane before emerging from FTL, they could pop up with only a moment's warning.

She had to spread her sensor net. She flicked a command over to her fighter hangar, and felt the nudge as the ready craft were flung outwards into space. The two lightly-armed scouts split away from the group immediately, their sensor suites giving her a greater warning if the enemy ship returned.

The four bomber craft lacked the sharp eyes of the scouts, but they would be useful in _other_ ways if the enemy strayed in range once more.

With a small flash of vertigo, her mind broke connection with the small-craft pilots, as they passed the hundred-kilometer practical limit for Unity Network reach. They were in the hands of the group's commander, now.

* * *

Captain Sanvir watched the two C-FLEET cruisers as a bolt of energy snaked outwards from the relay, tagging both ships. In the blink of an eye, they disappeared.

She sagged back in her chair, grateful for its padded comfort. She'd seen what the Turians and Salarians considered to be appropriate seating on their warships, and wanted no part of it. Honestly, had their ship-designers _never_ actually tried sitting a whole watch in those horrible things?

With a sigh, she started drumming her fingers on the armrest. All the comfort available to her couldn't fully hide the nervousness working its way upwards from her gut. Those C-FLEET goons were _going_ to start an incident, she just knew it.

Idly, she brought up the identifier for the relay that her squadron — the ones actually _experienced_ at talking to aliens that weren't impressed or at least terrified by the Citadel's power — waited.

If this stupidity didn't end with the phrase 'Relay 413 Incident', she'd be happy.

She did _not_ feel any happiness now.

* * *

With as much of a defensive perimeter as she could manage established, _Shanxi_ protectively shifted closer to the wounded _Fredericksburg_. For politeness's sake, she pulsed a message to the humans who crewed the smaller vessel. "Damage status? Withdrawal necessary?"

Speaking to baseline humans was so _slow_. It was un-necessary to make it even worse with elaborate sentences.

Her message sent, she queried the _Fredericksburg_ 's damage-control systems directly. At first reluctant to talk to a non-Alliance system, they obliged when she presented her override codes. Thank God they'd worked that out among the squadron before they'd even arrived at the first Artifact.

The _Fredericksburg_ had suffered a complete loss of her forward capacitor banks, the fragile machinery smashed to ruin by the impact. Thankfully her crew were safe in the protected manned section near the rear of the hull.

More to the point, the frigate was still combat-effective, if at a reduced level. _Shanxi_ would have to wait for a response from the Alliance Captain for an answer as to their next move.

While the microseconds slowly passed, she pored over the sensor readings for the rest of the system they were in. There was nothing too different from the charts sent from Captain Harper when her scout-craft had tailed the _Defiant_ into the system days ago.

She relaxed slightly. There was no alien armada waiting at the edge of visibility, ready to pounce. But then why had they attacked?

A screamed warning from her gravitational sensors brought her up short. The Artifact that they had arrived through was activating again. But it was far too soon for the rest of the squadron to come through – the plan was for them to wait until the _Shanxi_ or the _Fredericksburg_ returned, or one hour at the longest.

It had been less than two minutes since the two warships had been relayed through the Artifact. What had changed?

Her questions were answered when two more ships flashed into being, less than two-hundred kilometers off her starboard beam.

They were not human ships.

She snarled as her sensors played over the nearer of the two ships. It was an almost-perfect match for the _Fredericksburg_ 's attacker, if a few meters smaller in size. The other ship was of an utterly different design, with a narrow main hull flanked by sharply-angled 'wings' with a strong anhedral angle.

She brought her starboard laser arrays around, feeding them energy from her half-depleted capacitors. The only thing that was _supposed_ to be on the other side of that Artifact was the rest of her squadron. For alien warships to appear without warning or escort from human vessels could only indicate an ambush.

Hopefully her allies had been able to withdraw safely. Either way, these new alien ships had made one critical error: they were far closer to her now than their first ambusher had been.

Gleefully, she swiveled her starboard secondary-battery guns around, targeting the nearer, more angular alien warship. Time for some payback.

* * *

AN1: Does anybody know what a normal range is for how far apart two ships that travel through a relay would appear from each other upon arrival? I can't find good numbers anywhere, so I just took a stab and said "a few hundred kilometers." It works out well for this bit, at least.

AN2: I also can't find it stated anywhere whether GARDIAN lasers fire in pulses or continual beams. I'm going with pulses for this story.

AN3: I just realized that I haven't specifically stated such as yet, but at this point humanity (in this story) are still very new to the Relay system. They've literally found maybe a half-dozen relay pairs. As a result, they haven't encountered any relays that link to multiple other relays yet, so the current belief is that each relay is a point-to-point bridge between only two systems. I probably should have had this mentioned earlier in the story to make more sense, so whoops.

AN4: You can probably guess what's going to happen next. Here's a hint: from the perspective of both humanity (Unity and Alliance) and the Citadel, the _other_ side fired first. It may get sorted out later that "hey, that Asari warship wasn't a _Citadel_ warship," but that will take a good while. I know it's pretty contrived, but wars have started for stupider reasons in Earth's history and with weirder backgrounds.

Mainly, I just wanted to avoid the usual flavor of what I've seen in most Mass Effect fanfictions that cover a First Contact War (or Incident, depending on the story). Pretty much always, it's some Turian officer going along the lines of "What's this? Some new group of aliens, opening relays without permission from people they didn't know existed? Clearly we must shoot them first!" After all, clearly opening dormant relays is dangerous! You might run into an unknown alien species, who might be as dangerous as the Rachni!

Clearly the only way to avoid that is by _starting_ a war with an unknown alien species, who might be as dangerous as the Rachni! Heck, in half the HFY (Humanity, Fuck Yeah!) stories on this site alone, that's pretty much what happens. Either the UNSC gets pissed at more aliens shooting up their ships, or the Imperium of Man's Battle-Cruisers sneer at Hierarchy firepower, or the other 'usually-overpowered human faction of the day' decides to return fire with interest. Heck, one of those stories that I somewhat enjoyed ended up with Menae (a moon of Palaven) getting Nova-bombed by the UNSC. Good job, random Turian captain.

So I wanted to somewhat avoid that, by having a fight break out where both sides are frankly justified. Sure, the C-FLEET (a group of my own imagination, being the naval guard of the Citadel, led by the _Destiny Ascension_. They tend to be the elite of each species' naval forces, sent to show off in front of everyone else, and they know it.) commander is more than a little arrogant, but per ME canon the last time a mixed group of Citadel citizens made First Contact with a new species, they were _eaten_. So I think even she's rather justified in being a bit trigger-happy.

AN5: I also rather enjoyed writing the _Shanxi_ group-mind. I realized that I hadn't gotten to show-off just how far the Unity's gone down the trans-humanism path since a few snippets in chapter 1. It was more fun than I expected, especially getting them set up as an interesting parallel to the _other_ giant living starships made from fused organic minds. It'll be _real_ fun when the story gets to that part of the canon!


	11. Hits the Fan

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 11

Started: 15 February 2017

Published: 18 February 2017

* * *

With one eye on the timer counting away the seconds since Commodore T'Leran's two ships had jumped through the relay, Captain Sanvir drummed her fingers on the armrest of her command chair.

One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three,

One.

One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two—

A light slap on the back of her wrist stopped her. Turning to her right, she saw that Edea T'Keras had unbuckled from her own seat and reached over. "It's been how many years and you still have that habit?"

Eumenia shrugged, her lightly-armored vacuum suit shifting slightly. "It's not like there's anything else to do while waiting. And it's a harmless habit."

"It drives me mad, and you know it."

The captain smirked at her friend. "That's half the fun."

Her only answer was a none-too-soft punch to her shoulder.

"What? You're the only one who's ever complained about it."

At that, the ship's helmswoman spoke over her shoulder. While the maiden's ever-present grin couldn't be seen through her helmet, it certainly showed in her tone of voice. "We mostly just tune you out, ma'am."

Eumenia sighed dramatically, flouncing back down in her seat. "I swear to the Goddess, Leynira, you're the least-disciplined pilot in the galaxy."

"And the best, ma'am!"

Captain Sanvir had half-convinced herself to climb out of her own seat to swat the _Nefrane_ 's ever-snarky pilot upside the head when a shout from the sensors officer interfered. "Relay's lighting up, ma'am!"

Eumenia shot bolt upright in her seat. That was far too soon for T'Leran to send a ship back through the relay. They would have barely had time to arrive before re-activating it. The hard nugget of worry in her chest that she had been trying so hard to ignore solidified further.

Once more, she cursed the lack of communications buoys this far out from patrolled space. Without them, there was no way to pass a message through a relay pair except by sending a ship through to pass along the information.

But what could have gone wrong? There couldn't have _been_ enough time for T'Leran to start any trouble.

The few seconds that passed between the sensor officer's first warning and her second seemed to drag on for minutes. "Ship emerging from the relay, ma'am. It's the _Tasker_ — Merciful Goddess!"

Eumenia blinked in shock. It was the _Taskera_ , all right, but she looked decidedly worse-off than she had barely five minutes ago. Both her dorsal and ventral heat-sink columns were glowing as they radiated waste heat, and four of the GARDIAN laser emitters on her port flank looked to have _melted_.

The communications channel on Eumenia's command chair beeped, and she reflexively answered the call without drawing eyes from the savaged cruiser. Just before the image of the _Taskera_ was overlaid, she saw an irregular path of divots blasted out of the ship's port-upper hull, as if the Goddess's own machine-gun had walked fire along the length of the cruiser.

T'Leran's scowling visage appeared over the display of her wounded flagship. The view of the bridge behind her seemed almost normal – the damage seemed to have been confined to the outer hull.

Without preamble, the commodore spoke. "They opened fire the instant we left the relay."

They must have been caught completely off-guard, at close range. At least Asari cruisers were heavily armored for that sort of environment. But not Turian cruisers… "And the _Coriovallum_?"

The commodore's eyes sharpened. "Lost with all hands. Nuclear munitions, over a hundred kilotons."

The bridge of the _Nefrane_ went utterly silent. Weapons on that scale hadn't been used since the Rebellions. That was nearly triple the firepower of an average dreadnought's main gun.

Eumenia swallowed around the lump in her throat. "What do you need of us, ma'am?" She may not have liked T'Leran's approach, but it looked like the old witch was in the right, here. The Citadel seemed to be 2-for-2 when it came to violent First Contacts this century.

T'Leran gestured to the bridge around her. "The _Taskera_ will need some repairs before returning to combat. If our engineering teams could coordinate on the work to be done, that would speed the effort." She tapped at a control panel outside of the camera's field-of-view. "In the meantime, I have sent the sensor data from the encounter to all of the ships in your squadron. We will discuss the operations plan for our counterattack."

* * *

 _Shanxi_ poked through the glowing wreckage with her sensors. Such a strange design, with its apparent frailty dis-proven by the fact that the unknown alien warship still held most of its original shape, even after two near-perfect hits from _Shanxi_ 's nuclear weaponry.

While she was investigating, Captain Horace of the _Fredericksburg_ finally finished his sentence. _Shanxi_ quickly parsed through the words that her communications buffers had stored for the past few seconds. "Gods above, _Shanxi_ , was that really necessary?"

"Emitted radiation levels were eight percent below test ratings for Alliance civil-war-class frigates. You are unharmed. The enemy is not." Without waiting for a response from the slow-time human, she continued "Enemy emergence from Artifact suggests an ambush of our squadron. Securing a route back to known space is of high priority. You will proceed in-system to recover scout teams from planet. Our bomber wing will escort you at a distance. I will return through Artifact, clear enemies from withdrawal path." She hoped the Alliance captain would see the wisdom in following her instructions.

 _Shanxi_ was half-way through her turn back towards the Artifact when the return message came. "You ca—" a sigh further slowed his speech patterns. "You're right. We'll head further in system. _Fredericksburg_ , out." With that, the frigate jumped to FTL, punching a hole through the system's gravitational plane and slipping through.

As the flash of light from the jump subsided, _Shanxi_ reached out with her communications systems to the Artifact, carefully inputting the correct data. Weathering the migraine-like burst of pain as the alien device hurled her back through, she held her weapons systems ready for her emergence on the other side of the pair.

* * *

Captain Hannah Shepard started as the Artifact in front of her squadron lit up once more. Before any of the bridge crew could call out the update, the _Shanxi_ flashed into view between the squadron and the Artifact.

Shepard frowned at her data readouts. The _Shanxi_ was lit up like a Christmas tree, her lateral weapons banks hot and ready to fire. Before she could send a message of her own to the Unity warship, her console chirped to notify her of an incoming message.

Accepting, the display in the front of the bridge shifted to the _Shanxi_ 's ship icon: a grey background, on which was superimposed a stylized black outline of a house to the left of a mountain, with a bright-golden outline of a province-class cruiser floating above.

Not a second after the display came online, _Shanxi_ spoke, a hint of surprise in her eerie multi-toned voice. "The squadron is unharmed. Has nothing occurred?"

Hannah's frown deepened. "Nothing since you and _Fredericksburg_ jumped through the Artifact. What happened?" Her sensor readouts showed a veritable storm of coded gravitational pulses rocketing back and forth between the _Shanxi_ and the other Unity warships in the formation. Considering how rapidly Unity minds could communicate, they were _really_ discussing something.

 _Shanxi_ 's voice slowed from the veritable torrent of words it had spewed in the ship's first sentence. "We were attacked by an alien warship immediately upon emergence from the Artifact, lightly damaging the _Fredericksburg_. The enemy craft withdrew immediately afterward, before two additional hostiles emerged from the Artifact. It was assumed that they had ambushed the squadron on this side of the Artifact pair."

"We've seen nothing here. How could they have gone through without us noticing anything?"

Shepard saw the flood of messages between the Unity ships dry up a moment before the _Shanxi_ responded. "Consensus within the local Unity is that Artifacts may have capabilities beyond current observed performance. It is postulated that Artifacts may connect to multiple destinations simultaneously. Further testing of Artifacts within human space will be necessary." The _Shanxi_ began turning back towards the Artifact, as the four Unity warships that had waited with Shepard's squadron advanced towards the cruiser. "For now, priority lies with recovering the exploratory teams, inspecting enemy wreckage, and withdrawing before the enemy returns in greater strength." Her communications system beeped once more at the receipt of a data file. "A recording of the battle has been attached. We request that a copy be sent along with any message back to higher command."

"Wait one." Shepard muted the communication, and sent a brief message to one of the corvettes in her squadron. The SSV _Unconquered_ whirled about in the formation before jumping to FTL on a trajectory that would take her out of the system. The small, three-hundred-meter vessel would carry word of the encounter back to human space, a two-week trip at her best speed.

In the meantime, Shepard had to make her own decision. She pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking. As a captain doing a commodore's job commanding a squadron, she was given a very wide degree of freedom when operating this far from any higher authority. But did that include going to war with an utterly-unknown alien force?

She shook her head, straightening up. The choice had been made for her, really. The enemy had fired first, and there were more human lives on the line in the _Defiant_ and her crew. "My squadron will accompany you, _Shanxi_. What can we do to assist?"

"Much appreciated, captain. We request that your fast-transports accompany the majority of the battle-group to relieve the teams on-planet. Unity marines will inspect the enemy wreckage; radiation levels remain dangerous for standard-human exposure."

Shepard paused and looked up from where she was entering the commands for her squadron. "Radiation?"

"Enemy vessels proved resistant to pulse-laser fire, and highly maneuverable." _Shanxi_ 's tone shifted to one of smug satisfaction. "They were _not_ resistant to broadside carronade fire."

* * *

Commander Williams stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the proceedings. The junior Unity officer, Lieutenant Ward seemed to be doing a good job of putting together a translation along with the peculiar blue alien seated opposite of him at a temporary table brought out from the _Defiant_. Watching from just behind Ward's right shoulder was Corporal Brantt, who had left his weapons behind with the other Alliance marines.

A muttered curse from Williams' left drew his attention. Looking over, he saw Jackie Harper open her eyes, blinking blearily. He half-turned his head and asked in a low voice, "No luck yet, Captain Harper?"

"None." She shook her head. "Whatever that damn alien technology did, it's utterly broken my Communications system. I can't talk to anyone or anything."

"Welcome to life for the rest of us." He chuckled.

Harper glanced askance at him through the corner of her eyes, but the corner of her mouth hitched upwards in a grin. "Smartass." She shook her head again, and gestured to where Ward was currently talking to the alien in a slow, halting rendition of their vowel-heavy language. "It's just killing me that I can't follow along with that."

"He should be able to get a translation program to work with whatever-the-Hell those people speak, though, right?"

"Yeah, maybe a few hours' work, if he knows what he's doing. But out here, we've only got access to the Unity databanks on the ship." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing to where the one-hundred-meter Unity seemed outright small at barely a third of the keel length of the _Defiant_. "He'll have to figure it out on his own, and I can't even guide him."

"Why'd you send just two people on this mission, anyways, and one of them as new as Ward?"

Harper shrugged. "It was supposed to be a good training run for the kid. Get him off Earth, out of the dense Networks of Unity space, and let him acclimatize to his implants out here in relative quiet."

"Huh. All that for one guy?" His tone turned joking. "Should I be jealous?"

Metal clanged loudly as Harper jabbed an elbow into the armored side of his suit. The translation team froze, with the alien translator going stock-still. Across the hangar, the alien soldiers half-reached for their weapons. "Fuck." Muttered Harper, slowly spreading her hands, palms open. Raising her voice slightly, she spoke calmly "Sorry folks, personal argument."

After a few seconds, everyone relaxed, returning to their work. With a slow shake of her head, Harper continued in a low voice "Ward's one of the oldest to join the Unity, at 37 years. We're testing a more-adaptive neural lace, and out here's about as isolated of a test environment as we can get. Minimizes any chance of overloads."

"Ah. And here I thought you'd followed the _Defiant_ on my account."

"A side-benefit, of course." Harper's characteristic smirk was back. "I wanted something to do besides twiddling my thumbs watching Ward's brain adapt to his implants. Charting a new system seemed like a good distraction, possibly another adventure." She swept a hand in front of her, gesturing to the scene before them. "Well, I certainly got _that_. Didn't actually even get to really chart the system much at all, though." She paused, frowning. "For that matter, what did you end up naming this planet, anyways?"

Williams chuckled. "'Coruscoid.'"

"Ah. Let me guess, Brantt?" She nodded to where the Alliance marine was leaning over Ward's shoulder, watching raptly as the blue-skinned alien pointed to something displayed on her wrist-mounted computer. "He and you are the only sci-fi geeks on your crew that I know of, and you've always made a point of liking the 'original' stories."

"Got it in one. 'Coruscoid' won, 'Trantor' lost, so that's what this dirt-ball's written down as in the logs."

"You people are _so_ going to get sued when word gets back home." Harper snorted. "On another note, where on this planet did you _ever_ see dirt? From what I saw on the way in, it's concrete all over. It's like a planet-wide arcology."

Williams was about to respond when his radio chirped for his attention. "Williams here."

Captain Paulson of the _Defiant_ was on the other end. "Sensors have picked up a grav-plane tunnel forming in orbit. Looks like our backup's here."

Williams frowned. "So soon?" The specialized transmission equipment on the _Defiant_ had been able to send a brief, coded message through subspace, but the small ship didn't have the space to fit the even-bulkier machinery needed to read a message from subspace. So while there shouldn't have been any ships near enough to respond already, Williams acknowledged that his expedition may have just not been able to receive notice.

"Yes. And it's too big for just a few ships. Put everyone on-guard, XO, something's off here. Sensors say we've got fifty seconds before the tunnel opens."

"Aye, sir." Williams broke off the channel, and switched to the open channel shared between all the crew outside the ship. Adding Harper and Ward to the channel, he relayed the news. " _Defiant_ 's got a grav-tunnel on sensors in-orbit here, and it's a big one. Something's up, so be on your guard."

Without interrupting his talks with the alien, Ward responded "Should I keep going, here?"

"Yes." Harper chimed in. "Until we _know_ something's wrong, best to keep things rolling smoothly."

"Sounds right." Williams opened another channel back to Captain Paulson. "We're on-guard out here, sir. And the ship?"

"We've got the impellers on hot-standby. Defenses are up, too."

Williams resisted the urge to turn his head and look at the two laser-domes that faced out towards the negotiations. Drawing strength from the bulk of the ship behind him, he calmly responded "Good to hear, sir."

* * *

As Captain Hadd-vosh's second-in-command, Captain Varus was part of the Blue Suns officer channel on their communications systems. So he heard the warning from the _Eboracum_. "Sirs, sensors have picked up some sort of gravitational anomaly forming in low orbit, range two hundred kilometers."

"Hadd-vosh here. Elaborate on 'anomaly.' Could it be a cloaked ship?"

Varus's mandibles flared slightly. The only party who operated stealth craft on any sort of regular basis was the STG. If those sneaky bastards had been lurking around the system already, why hadn't they shown themselves before now?

"Possible, sir. It's a bit concentrated for a ship. And it's…growing. Ah, magnitude is increasing, sir."

There were a few seconds of silence before the Batarian leader of the Suns team spoke again. " _Eboracum_ , close on the anomaly's position and identify it. Do _not_ fire on anything unless fired upon first."

Varus nodded slowly. It may have been many, many years since he last served with the Hierarchy navy, but he well remembered the joint exercises with Salarian naval forces. They may have been even more reticent to stand and fight than even the Asari, but their ships compensated with firepower for what they lacked in armor. Not to mention that, even without a messenger-buoy pair at the Relay, an STG ship could have gotten a message back to their headquarters. The slippery little bastards got toys that even _SpecTRes_ could only dream of, from what he'd heard.

For the ship to be extra cautious was only a good idea. One that Varus had personal reasons for supporting, as well as tactical.

The Turian captain opened a private channel to the captain of the _Eboracum_. " _Do_ be careful, Kereen."

In answer, he heard the musical laughter of the woman he'd followed into employment with the Blue Suns. "You worry too much. When am I _not_ careful?" Her flanged voice was tinged with humor.

"Only all the time. How about that scrap on Estorium? I seem to recall someone leading the team right into an Eclipse trap."

"And that's why I've got a big, strong Cabalite to protect me."

"I had to beat off two huntresses and drag your bleeding body for half a kilometer back to base!"

His fiancée remained as frustratingly flighty as always, snickering loudly. "Can't say I've heard of someone 'beating off' an Asari before. And two at once!"

Varus closed his eyes, holding his breath for a second to calm himself before responding. "I'm _serious_ , Kereen. This is a rather hair-trigger situation down here right now."

Her voice somehow managed to return to a level tone as she responded "I _am_ serious. You know I— Spirits!"

Varus's right hand reflexively twitched towards the safety on his rifle. "What?"

His answer came on the officer-wide channel, as Kereen cut off the personal chat. "Sirs, it _is_ a ship. It doesn't look Salarian, though. Forwarding sensor feeds now. It just…appeared."

Varus snapped his omni-tool open, looking at the camera feed received from the _Eboracum_.

That was certainly no ship _he_ recognized. His eyes flicked up, looking at the human starship looming over the people scuttling about in its shadow. The new ship had a similar blue-and-white paint-scheme, but the shape was entirely different. But who else could it be?

Hadd-vosh seemed to have reached the same conclusion. "Looks like our new friends brought reinforcements."

"And without Eezo, sirs."

"What?" Varus's eyebrow-ridges rose in surprise.

"Grav scanners say this new ship is completely mass-normal, no Eezo perturbations."

Varus looked back up from his omni-tool. The human starship before him was shielded from most scans by the strange material of the Prothean skyscraper, but he'd certainly assumed that these new aliens used Eezo like everyone else.

How else could they have gotten a vessel of that size to land on a planet? He couldn't see any external thrusters large enough to support its weight. "Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. We're getting clear readings on—" Her voice broke off momentarily. "Update, sirs! The ship is charging weapons!"

"What!?" Varus shouted, as the infrared readings on the human ship in orbit spiked on his omni-tool. A moment later, and he could hear the warning klaxon from the _Eboracum_ 's bridge in the Kereen's transmission, a background to her voice descending to its battle-trained calm. "Going to action stations. Venting atmosphere."

He could only clench his hands in frustration as the data-feed reflected the laser fire which played across the Suns frigate's forward hull. The damage-control representation of the _Eboracum_ on his omni-tool lit up with blood-blue slashes, reaching deep into the diminutive ship.

Too deep.

" _Eboracum_! Withdraw!" shouted Hadd-vosh. The alarm in his voice could not be matched by Varus, whose voice could only let out a strangled keening as the data-feeds to his omni-tool cut off abruptly.

Two-hundred and fifty kilometers above them, the _Eboracum_ 's central capacitor bank ruptured explosively, splitting the small ship in half. The two sections fell slowly back into the planet's gravity well, shedding escape pods as they re-entered the thin atmosphere.

* * *

"You're here for _WHAT_!?" shouted Harper into her radio.

The communications officer from the SSV _York_ responded. "We're here to cover the _Defiant_ and the _E-38_ as they withdraw from the engagement. We've cleared the enemy warship from above you; you're clear to extract."

Williams spoke next, tone a match for Harper's incredulousness. " _What_ engagement? We're just getting a translation put together down here, peacefully!" He paused for a heartbeat. "What the fuck _happened_ up there?"

"Uhh…" drawled Harper as she reached for the coilgun holstered at her hip. "Maybe not so peacefully."

"What?" Williams repeated, looking up. While he had been distracted, a standoff had developed.

The two marines of the _Defiant_ 's complement stood with rifles shouldered, with four armed sailors beside them. Aiming back at them were the alien soldiers. Two of them in the middle — one of the four-eyes and one of the metal-skinned ones — had faintly-glowing blue fields playing over their armor.

Williams wasn't too ready to apply human body language to aliens, but the beady black eyes of the glowing-armored metal-head alien did _not_ look friendly.

"Shit."

* * *

AN1: Hey, Leynira probably _is_ the snarkiest pilot in the ME galaxy at this point. I mean, it's 2151, 30 years before the events of ME1. I don't think Joker's even been born yet, let alone learned to fly starships.

AN2: For anyone who may be interested, the icon that _Shanxi_ uses is a reference to the real-life province of Shanxi, in China. According to Wikipedia, Shanxi means "West of the Mountains" in Mandarin, so I figured that this might be reflected in the icon that the ship uses to represent herself.


	12. It Gets Worse

Unity of Mankind, Chapter 12

Started: 18 February 2017

Published: 22 February 2017

* * *

"Hot damn." Muttered Corporal Nilsson, staring at the external camera feed of their dropship fed to his helmet's internal display. "Those Navy boys really let 'em have it."

"Amen to that." Agreed Private Cooper, voice uncharacteristically solemn. "Never thought I'd see a real-combat drop, let alone fighting aliens."

"Yeah." In the next row of seats in the cramped passenger bay of the dropship sat Private Taylor, who looked back over her shoulder from her last-minute check of the light coilgun laid across her lap. "Sobering, isn't it?"

Ibrim nodded mutely in response, eyes glued to the feed as the dropship raced through the glowing-blue gas venting from one of the plummeting halves of the alien warship. The dropship and their gunship escort began to glow as they passed through the gas cloud, the gas reflecting off of the angled forward plates of the small crafts' armor.

Ibrim let his mind wander, as the countdown timer to landing passed three minutes. He'd done all he could to get ready, and worrying during the descent wouldn't help his nerves settle. A thought struck him. "What do you reckon this glowing stuff is, anyways? That isn't just sun-light that brightens it."

Next to him, Durand shrugged. "Hell if I know. Fuel?"

The Swedish-born corporal checked the feed from the dropship's sensors once more. "Maybe. Sensors can't make heads-or-tails of it, though."

Ever ready with a strange idea, Cooper interjected "Could be blood, maybe. That alien ship looked kinda like a bird, maybe a stork. Could be the 'ship' _was_ an alien."

"That's an odd one, even for you, man." Durand retorted.

"Hey, that's the _point_ of aliens."

Ibrim intervened before another argument could break out. "You've seen the reports, same as me. Contact reports say these aliens are as humanoid as you and me."

Taylor snorted. "Most of us, maybe. I hope we don't have to fight anyone as large as Lumberjack." She elbowed the American private next to her.

"Hey, not my fault they made these shuttle seats tiny as Hell! I've seen _airliners_ with more foot-room than this!" Cooper replied defensively. "As I was saying, we've only got vague reports from the explorer teams on the ground. There's a lot of variety that can fit within the term 'humanoid.'" He paused for a moment before blurting out another idea. "Besides, maybe there's _many_ types of aliens here, not just one!"

The back of Ibrim's mind noted the landing counter pass sixty seconds.

Durand made a show of drawing in a shocked breath. "You mean we're at war with the _Federation_?"

"Nerd-boy." Laughed Taylor.

The rest of the weapons-team's joking conversation faded out in Ibrim's mind, as the landing timer neared fifty seconds.

Just as the count hit fifty-one, the shuttle's pilot came over the radio, her clipped tone snapping Ibrim back to action. "Sounds like things have gotten hot at the LZ. We'll sweep the site a bit along with the gunships, roll the red carpet out for you foot-sloggers."

Durand groaned. "Shooting from a moving target a hundred meters in the air. I'm feeling queasy already."

"Beats jumping out right into enemy fire!" responded the pilot. "Shifting to horizontal cabin in ten seconds, ready up."

The soldiers quickly brought their arms and legs close in to their bodies, cradling their side-arms carefully.

Exactly ten seconds after the pilot's warning, the seats in the shuttle rotated. Instead of facing towards the front of the shuttle, they rotated to face outwards from the center-line of the small craft. "Shift over, grunts. Ready up, shutters open in twenty."

Ibrim staggered upright against the shuttle's acceleration pressing him to the floor. Drawing his coilgun from its holster, he carefully shifted over to perch on the narrow ledge below the narrow band of the still-closed armored shutters in the outer hull of the dropship.

A quick glance to either side showed the rest of his team readying up as well. The other twenty soldiers in the dropship with them, riflemen from one of the other teams in the company, also stood-to along the sides of the triangular-shaped shuttle.

At Nilsson's left, Durand and Cooper hefted their railgun onto its mount, ready to fire when the shutters opened. Taylor and Specialist Brown, the team's quiet giant, had already gotten their railgun emplaced on the other side of the shuttle's pointed nose.

"Shutters in five, make ready!" called the pilot.

Ibrim focused on steadying his breathing. This was it. Live combat. What he'd joined the Systems Alliance Army hoping never to see.

At least he wasn't out to kill other humans, noted a corner of his mind. Should the relief that that brought bother him? Living beings were living beings, and all that.

His musings were interrupted by another warning from the pilot. "Shutters opening! Targets forward!"

The hundred-millimeter-thick armor plating over the forward compartment shutters of the shuttle snapped open. Ibrim brought his coilgun up to his shoulder, peering through the narrow firing slit at the scene outside. The team's shuttle hovered fifty meters outside of an open hangar, where an Alliance scout corvette was parked nose-in.

And in that hangar was a war-zone.

Ibrim's helmet HUD lit up with IFF and target markers, blue and green outlines for Alliance or Unity personnel with a blood-red outline around enemy targets.

A flurry of red-marked targets crouched behind protrusions from the hangar floor, trading shots with a single Alliance marine and two Navy crewmen. As Ibrim lined his coilgun up on the left-most alien, he squinted at the target. Too far away to make out details.

His coilgun and the two railguns of his team fired as one, the deep _thump_ s of the heavy weapons interspersed with the crackling of his coilgun. A moment later, the lighter railguns of the riflemen behind him joined in.

Ibrim's target disappeared in a flash as a shimmering energy barrier absorbed the first few shots. _Energy shields!?_ After the surprise wore off, he saw his target bolt out from cover, sprinting for an opening in the hangar opposite of the _Defiant_. Another burst put the target down, writhing on the floor.

Switching targets, he lined up on another enemy just in time to see it take one of Durand's railgun rounds center-of-mass. Instead of the expected explosion of gore, the alien instead hurtled to the ground, a tell-tale blue-purple glow surrounding it.

Their shuttle lurched closer, the stuttering roar of its impeller pods changing pitch as it entered the hangar opening. The last remaining hostile glanced over at the approaching dropship for a moment before ducking down behind its cover.

With a momentary pause in the firing, Ibrim quickly eyed the laser domes on the _Defiant_ 's flank. Why hadn't they stopped this fight before it even started? His eyes fell on the fore-most laser blister, and narrowed. It was a blackened, charred ruin, armor plating peeled back from the wrecked dome. What could have done _that_?

Some instinct drew his attention — and his aim — to the door in the wall of the hangar, the one that his first target had failed to reach. He barely caught a faint blur of movement in the shadows through the opening.

A bright flash accompanied a small, glowing projectile that streaked out from the door, almost directly towards Ibrim. Reflexively ducking, he threw one hand over his helmeted face.

A cataclysmic explosion hurled the shuttle downwards, the muted roar of the detonation rattling his head even through his helmet. The entire weapons team were lifted from their feet momentarily, before slamming back into the shuttle's deck plating as it fell ten meters to slam into the hangar floor.

Ibrim's head hit the front of his helmet, the shock-absorbing padding shielding him from serious injury. Blinking at the ringing in his ears, he clambered back up to the firing slit, blearily pointing his coilgun in the rough direction of the small door leading into the hangar.

As he held down the trigger, he shouted into his team's radio channel "All fire on that doorway! Keep their heads down!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Specialist Brown resume firing, the thump of his railgun seeming louder now without the shuttle's impeller pods to chip away at his hearing.

He blinked, realizing what he'd missed in the confusion. The impeller pods were silent! He keyed his radio to the shuttle-wide channel, firing his coilgun one-handed. "Pilot! We got a broken bird here?"

Silence.

"Pilot?"

He half-turned his head, glancing at the ladder leading up from the passenger compartment to the cockpit. The riflemen sergeant in the larger rearward compartment seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as the senior non-com roughly barked at one of his troopers "Ramirez! Get up that ladder, see what's wrong!"

One of the riflemen quickly slung his railgun, sprinting over to the ladder before climbing quickly. At that moment, Ibrim's coilgun clicked empty. He grabbed one of the spare magazines from his armor's pouches, sliding it into place.

Just as he resumed firing, he heard the rifleman call back, voice rising in panic "Cockpit took a direct hit, sir! It's _gone_ , the pilot's spread all over the walls!"

"Shit." Muttered the sergeant over the open channel.

"Shit!" agreed Ibrim, as a large shape barreled out from the same small hatch into the hangar. Roughly humanoid, it looked like a gorilla crossed with a goddamned _crocodile_. Ignoring the weapons fire that scattered off of its purple barrier, it lined up the bulky weapon in its hand for one more shot at the downed shuttle.

"DOWN!" screamed Ibrim, as the enemy weapon spat a familiar small, glowing projectile seemingly right towards his face.

His team had barely had time to react when the shot impacted on the rounded nose of the dropship. The blast tore a gaping hole in the hull between the two railgun emplacements, hurling the soldiers back and onto the floor once more.

Ibrim blinked in shock, trying to draw in a breath against the weight keeping his lungs from working. The ringing in his ears was all that he could hear, save his own heartbeat.

With great effort, he managed to roll over to look at his team. Brown and Taylor were struggling to their feet, the taller specialist shaking his head roughly.

But next to them, Cooper lay completely still on his back. Next to him, Durand wriggled wildly, clutching at the still-glowing shard of red-hot jagged metal lodged in his gut.

That was enough to shock Ibrim back into action. Still on the shuttle-wide channel, he hoarsely shouted "Medic! Gunners down in the front!"

As he struggled back to his feet, a glance over his shoulder showed that his men were not the only casualties. A half-dozen riflemen also struggled on the floor, the machinery in the center of the shuttle dotted with yet more fragments buried in the metal.

Swallowing to clear his dry throat, Ibrim lurched over to Durand and Cooper. He'd have to do his own best for them, but the alien with the goddamned _anti-tank cannon_ had to die first.

The enemy didn't seem to care about normal weapons fire, but Ibrim knew something that should get its attention. He slapped the magazine release on Durand's railgun, still perched on its mount. Outside, the reptilian alien fiddled with its weapon, feeding some sort of ammunition into it, utterly ignoring the now-reduced fire which had yet to pierce its glowing barrier.

Whirling around, Ibrim frantically pawed over the spare railgun magazines stored underneath Cooper's half-melted seat along the center column of the dropship. Finally finding his goal, the corporal hefted the rectangular magazine, with its purple inverted trefoil stamped on its flat surface.

Loading the anti-vehicle special ammunition into the railgun's feed slot, he drew a bead on the alien standing arrogantly out in the open. The enemy looked back, heavy weapon shouldered, a glow building in its wide muzzle. Ibrim reflexively jammed down on the firing stud for the railgun.

Nothing.

Cursing, he looked over his weapon. He'd qualified on this damn thing, but that was _years_ ago! He—

The alien fired. Its devastating projectile rocketed over the shuttle and out of sight.

A dull explosion sounded in the distance.

Blinking in surprise at finding himself alive, Ibrim wracked his mind, trying to recall how to ready his railgun.

He remembered. Berating himself for his stupidity, he yanked on the charging handle, sending the first antimatter-tipped explosive round into the firing chamber.

* * *

When the alien talking with their language expert had been thrown back from his seat by a shot hitting his chest, Liara had immediately dropped to the ground.

She glanced up just in time to hear the torrent of gunfire erupt, a stray shot knocking Haelina from her seat to fall beside Liara, the older matron's eyes wide and staring.

And her body all too still.

Liara pressed herself as flat against the cold, metal floor of the Prothean hangar as she could.

She wracked her brain, trying frantically to get her biotic barrier in place. The standard University of Serrice jumpsuit she wore came with its own shield module, but it hadn't done Haelina any good. Hopefully a barrier on top of it would keep Liara alive.

She could _feel_ the little tugs of air as the storm of firepower raged scant centimeters over her head.

A detached corner of her mind, the part normally useful for keeping focused on her studies in the face of the grueling schedule of an ambitious graduate student, calmly analyzed the situation.

 _It would be much easier to raise your barrier if whomever-that-is would stop screaming_.

Two racing heartbeats later, it made another observation.

 _You're the one screaming_.

Liara blinked in shock, closing her mouth. Only now did she feel the rawness in her throat, the exhaustion from emptying her lungs amidst the deafening rattle of gunfire.

She focused on her training, recalling those mind-numbing repetitive exercises with Shiala, in the estate gardens. The endless biotic drills, the athletic exercises that had led her to unexpected success with the University's bioti-ball team later in life.

With a brief shake of her head, Liara banished the irrelevant memories. All she had needed were the _lessons_. Carefully, she flexed her eezo nodules, directing their growing field along her nervous system.

With a tangible nudge, her barrier flickered into place, held tight over her armor.

The firing had died down somewhat, but she dared not raise her head to look around. The sharper crackling of the mercenaries' mass-accelerator rifles was all-but-drowned out by the deeper sporadic thumps of the 'humans' weapons.

What had even happened? What had started the killing again? One second, Haelina and the human negotiator had been finalizing their work on a rough translator program on the matron's omni-tool. Less than a second later, and both of them were hurled to the ground by a gunfight erupting from nowhere.

She glanced to her left, seeing matriarch Sulita crouched behind the bullet-ridden body of a Batarian Blue Suns trooper, using the corpse as a shield. With her left hand holding her improvised cover in place, the expedition leader's right arm shot out, hurling a _warp_ towards the human attackers.

Striking one of them in the chest, it hurled the figure back against the unyielding hull of their starship. Their weapon falling from nerveless fingers, the human slumped to the floor bonelessly.

A heartbeat later, and Sulita's barrier glinted brightly as a hurricane of fire focused on her, the Suns corpse she held in front of her dancing like a macabre marionette under the impacts.

Sulita crouched lower to the ground, turning her head to look towards Liara. The maiden could faintly make out her mentor shouting _something_ over the team's radio, but everything just sounded so _far away_ right now.

She could _feel_ , however, the rhythmic thumping coming from her right. Whirling her head around, her eyes bugged out as she gazed out of the open hangar bay.

Two large vehicles hovered in the air, facing the battle.

The larger, vaguely triangular one had four stumpy wings, at the ends of which were large, narrow pods currently pointed vertically. As they shifted slightly, the pitch of the rapid thumping changed also.

The dark, reflective panels at the top of the craft, presumably cockpit windows, seemed to stare back at her, the sunlight glinting off of them like the accusing stare of a predator.

Suddenly, small sections of the outer hull of the triangular craft dropped down, revealing dark, rectangular slits. Liara pressed herself back down into the hard floor, making herself as flat as she could. She recognized firing ports when she saw them.

Even muted by her helmet, the fusillade that swept the open hangar rattled her skull. A stray shot rebounded off of Liara's barrier, the force of the impact knocking the breath from her lungs.

She couldn't stay here, in the open. Her barriers were only barely holding. But where could she move to? She frantically looked around near her.

Several meters away, a mess of machinery protruded from the floor. The back of her mind pondered what purpose it may have served, but the important part was that it was made from the same strong material that the Protheans built what seemed like _everything_ from. It was only knee-high off the ground, but it would be solid cover for her to duck behind.

With a surge of effort, she replenished her near-depleted barriers, pushing herself up to get her legs under her. Kicking off, she sprinted towards the machinery. If only Coach D'Chara could have seen how fast she covered those ten meters!

Somehow, she made it to cover without being hit, even as the soft tugs of air displaced by shots pulled at her soft-shelled suit. Throwing herself down behind the machinery, she curled up as tightly as she could, making sure she was entirely protected from the human weapons.

Liara shut her eyes, reciting a quick prayer to the Goddess. She hadn't considered herself a religious person before now; her mother had been a follower of Siari philosophy rather than the Temple of Athame since before Liara was born.

But she swore on her Family's honor, if she survived this she'd drag the whole _Estate_ , acolytes and all, to the Temple in Armali every month for as long as she lived.

Opening her eyes, she yelped in surprise. A Turian Blue Suns trooper was crouched down behind the Prothean machinery next to her, looking at her. She could see his mouth open and close through his helmet's faceplate, but his shouting was as muffled as everything else was to her.

She shouted back, one hand snaking up to tap the side of her helmet. "WHAT!? CAN'T HEAR!"

The mercenary responded by pointing to her left, followed by more inaudible shouting. Glancing over, Liara saw that Sulita had managed to make it to the door that they'd used to enter the hangar so long ago. The matriarch stood in the doorway, beckoning wildly to Liara.

But that was a good thirty meters away. Liara risked a quick glance around the side of her cover. The human dropship was closer now, just inside the entrance of the hangar. The dark firing slits along its leading edges were sporadically lit by muzzle flashes, giving intermittent glimpses of the shadowy figures inside.

The Turian next to Liara, half-crouched with only his chest exposed, fired back. Even as his rifle's barrel glowed a dull red, he kept his talon clenched on the trigger. Just as his weapon finally seized up, a shot bowled him over, even as a purple barrier absorbed most of the impact.

Liara reached over to the groaning Turian, grabbing his leg and pulling him back into cover next to her. It seemed that the humans knew they hadn't quite killed the mercenary, as shots sparked off of the metal floor and all around the edges of their machinery, slowly chipping away at her cover.

She had to leave, but even divine intervention wouldn't save her if she stepped out into that storm of fire. Turning back to Sulita, Liara shook her head wordlessly, eyes wide in panic.

Sulita turned around, motioning towards someone deeper in the shadows of the hallway beyond the door. Liara blinked in surprise as the figure moved up, switching places with the matriarch.

Stepping into the light bleeding into the doorway from the hangar, Wrex raised a bulky weapon to his shoulder. Liara had all-but-forgotten about the gruff mercenary, the bodyguard hired by her overprotective mother. She knew it wasn't the Krogan's fault, but she hadn't been able to see him as more than a representation of Benezia's meddling. At least the T'Soni matriarch had stopped trying her House commandoes added to the archaeological teams.

But what weapon was he holding? It didn't look like any missile launcher Liara had ever seen in a vid, and how much use would one more gun be?

She blinked at the bright flash as Wrex fired, the glowing projectile spat from a muzzle blackened by repeated firing. A heartbeat later, and a massive explosion rocked the hangar, causing Liara to fall flat on the floor.

Peering around the machinery, she was just in time to see the human dropship plummet from the sky, crashing into the floor and sending a shockwave throughout the hangar. Even Wrex stumbled slightly as he shoved some sort of ammunition into his weapon.

Liara blinked in shock at the charred ruin of the craft's cockpit. For a moment, both sides of the fight were silent, whether in shock at the loss of the large craft or just recovering from the impact of its crash.

Now was the time to get out of here. But the Turian mercenary was still near-immobile on the ground. She couldn't leave him behind.

Thinking quickly, she focused her biotics in her right hand. Grasping the Suns trooper by the front of his armor, she enveloped him in an eezo field to lower his mass. Focusing on the doorway, Liara could just make out Sulita shouting at her, half-hidden in the shadows of the hallway beyond.

The young maiden took a deep breath. Just like pitching the ball to one of her team-mates in a bioti-ball tournament at the University. Just a lot heavier, less aerodynamic, and there were people _shooting_ at her.

She threw the Turian. The mercenary skittered along the floor, before sliding right into the target. Liara swore she hadn't aimed for the matriarch _intentionally_ , but the flying mercenary nevertheless bowled her mentor over, the two of them falling out of sight.

She'd get an earful for that, later. But for now, it was her turn.

Just as she half-rose, ready to sprint across the open ground to safety, another volley erupted from the downed human craft, shots glancing off the wall all around the door she was aiming for.

Liara ducked back down. There went _that_ option. But what now?

Her answer came in the form of Wrex barreling out from the opening, bulling through the torrent of weapons fire that glanced off of his barrier. She stared. She hadn't seen a barrier _that_ dense since her mother stopped by her biotics practice with Shiala, decades ago!

The Krogan fired another shot at the downed shuttle, punching a smoking hole in its nose, more than an arm's breadth across. What _was_ that gun?

It certainly seemed to have suppressed the gunship, though. Liara jumped up from cover, sprinting towards the door out of this battlefield.

She made it nearly half-way there when a loud hissing came from her left, towards the hangar opening. Glancing over mid-stride, Liara felt her blood run cold.

The _other_ human aircraft, the one she'd forgotten about, was firing at her. Two missiles dropped from the wings of the gunship where they met its narrow, tall fuselage, igniting their motors and racing forwards.

Presumably aimed for Wrex, but they certainly _looked_ like they were streaking towards _her_ too.

The Krogan mercenary flung a _throw_ towards the missiles. Against all logic, it actually hit, deflecting the two projectiles away. One spiraled wildly off-course, detonating against the hull of the human starship to Wrex's left.

The other streaked over the mercenary's head, skimming just past his barriers. As if guided by one of the demons banished by Athame long ago, it homed in straight for Liara.

She poured the last of her biotic reserves into reducing her mass, kicking off from the ground and jumping. A heartbeat later, the warhead detonated where she had stood, the shockwave flinging her out of control.

Liara slammed into the wall several meters away from the door, her over-stressed barriers disappearing in a flash of purple light.

She slumped to the ground, groaning softly. Her chest felt crushed, as if she'd been tackled by one of her bioti-ball team's heavy lineswomen. Maybe two.

Head ringing, she opened her eyes in time to see Wrex fire his cannon one more time, towards the gunship this time. The craft nimbly dodged to one side to evade.

It almost made it.

The mercenary's projectile struck the very tip of the aircraft's right engine pod, the blast sending it spinning out of sight, trailing smoke.

Just as the Krogan reached for more ammunition, a muzzle flash lit up the destroyed front of the dropship.

A blindingly-bright flash erupted right in front of Wrex's nose, his barriers gone in an instant. Even as he staggered backwards, a second explosion blasted him off his feet. A third hit the ground where he had been standing, sending the heavy mercenary sliding along the floor, crumpling into a heap at the base of the wall.

Liara roughly pushed herself up on her knees and elbows, crawling towards the open doorway to safety. Judging by the smoke curling out from the large divots blasted in Wrex's armor, there was nothing she could do for him. Even Krogan had to have limits.

But no sooner had she started to move than whatever weapon had downed the mercenary shifted fire to the doorway. Several blinding explosions shattered the wall around the entrance, sending fragments whistling through the air away from the blasts. Thank the Goddess, Liara's light armor was enough to deflect the jagged projectiles. Her biotics ached like never before; she doubted she could raise even the weakest of barriers.

Her ragged breath caught as the dust cleared to reveal that the doorway, the only way out of the hangar, had been utterly destroyed. A heap of glowing wall fragments obscured where the entrance had been, completely impassable.

Blinking, Liara collapsed onto the floor, exhausted. Now what?

A clatter from her left drew her attention. Several armed and armored humans were exiting the downed shuttle, bulky rifles trained in her direction.

She slowly rose to a kneeling position, careful to keep her arms wide, palms open in surrender. Hopefully these humans weren't as bad as the other Terminus powers she'd heard horror stories about.

* * *

AN1: I've honestly never before enjoyed writing _characters_ too much. I've normally mostly liked writing what another author friend of mine termed 'techno-porn.' Descriptions of starships, machinery, etc.

But writing the group of Alliance soldiers (Nilsson, Durand, Cooper and Taylor) is actually really fun. I guess they've been self-promoted away from being throw-away POV characters.

AN2: I'm playing a bit loose with some of the ME canon timeline, as exemplified here by having a Cain in 2151. It just seemed fair to give the Blue Suns _something_ to level the playing field in terms of heavy firepower. Also, the Cain is just a fun weapon.

AN3: Also, yes Wrex just almost soloed a dropship _and_ a gunship at once.

AN4: I'm not too sure about Liara's POV here. I mean, she's 30 years younger here than in ME1, so she's _very_ definitely not used to being in the middle of a firefight. On the other hand, pretty much all of the stories I've read that have POV of a person in the middle of a gunfight are from the POV of a trained soldier, or a plain badass, or someone else who isn't likely to panic. So I'm not sure how well I wrote Liara's reaction here.

Eh, chalk it up to her being awesome even before ME1, or maybe Asari react better to psychological shocks than Humans do, or something.

AN5: It also just occurred to me (derp) that if the "impeller" reactionless propulsion units used by humanity here really _are_ reactionless, you logically wouldn't 'hear' them or anything. Sound waves are a 'reaction' after all. But that would be boring, so meh.

AN6: But going back to Liara (these Author's Notes are pretty stream-of-consciousness, in case you haven't noticed), do you think she's too calm & collected for being the equivalent of a ~17 year old university student caught in a military-grade shootout? I didn't really want to have a well-loved character from the games just curl up in the corner & cry.

AN7: I forget which story I first saw the idea of 'bioti-ball' as some biotics-heavy sport in Citadel space, so I can't really give credit to whomever first made it up. I'm pretty sure it isn't from canon, since I can't find any reference to it on a wiki. At any rate, since I can't go back to whatever story I first saw the idea in, I'm pretty much making up the game as I go along. As an American, naturally the first sport I think to compare it to is American football, maybe mixed with Rugby for flavor.

However, the idea of Liara as a bioti-ball player at university is from the "Cari'ssi'mi" series on this website, by the author 'Joking611.' I quite like his work (it does a good bit of fleshing out Liara's backstory and character), so I strongly recommend that people go read his work. The character of Matriarch Sulita is also from that story, although she isn't really described beyond just being the archaeology professor who takes Liara on as a graduate student.


	13. A New Challenger Appears

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 13

Started: 22 February 2017

Published:

* * *

Jackie Harper held back a growl as her right hand twitched again. The nerve connections that had been severed yesterday hadn't had time to be repaired fully before this second round of fighting had interrupted.

She needed her medigel for more important tasks, now.

Shifting the packet holding the bio-engineered healing salve to her left hand, she spread more of the substance over the puncture wounds that dotted Commander Williams' lower chest. At least his breathing was stabilized now, if softly. Patching up the holes in his lungs had fixed that problem, and the medigel could pick up the slack from the blood he'd lost, too.

Looking over the rest of the Alliance officer's body, she nodded and stood up wearily. The rest of his wounds were non-fatal, and her medigel was needed for the other casualties. She glanced at the bodies being loaded into the _Defiant_ 's ventral cargo bay, far too many of them wearing Alliance blue-and-white.

And one in Unity blue-and-gold. Looks like she wouldn't get to see if Ward could adapt to his implants, after all.

Sighing, Harper commed the _Defiant_ 's overworked corpsman. She'd waved him away from Williams, trusting Unity bio-mechanical medical technology more than whatever the Alliance considered standard. To his credit, the corpsman hadn't tried to argue. Maybe it was the tonne-and-a-half of armor she wore, or maybe it was the coilgun holstered at her hip, barrel still glowing a dull red even nearly fifteen minutes after the fire-fight had ended.

"Corpsman Fischer, do your wounded require any further stabilization?"

"No." His voice was loaded with the same level of weariness that Harper kept hidden from hers. Someone had to keep an 'officer's calm' here, and with Williams unconscious and the _Defiant_ 's captain readying the ship for departure, that left her as the only commissioned officer in the hangar.

"Very well." She cut the communication, walking over towards the two aliens left alive after the intense gun-fight. Most of them had escaped through the small hangar entrance.

One had even, rather spectacularly, been _thrown_ away from the battle, a strange blue glow surrounding the armored soldier. _That_ , above all else, was the reason why these two prisoners were so important. The small, blue Humanoid — an "Asari," by what Harper had overheard of Ward's doomed translation efforts earlier — and the large, hulking reptilian had both displayed the same ability, shielding themselves from fire.

Very _intense_ fire, in the larger alien's case. Ward stomped to a halt by the alien, examining it. Against all plausibility, the damn thing still _breathed_. It had taken what, three direct hits from an Alliance Army heavy railgun, firing their special antimatter-tipped rounds? Those things were designed to kill _Unity_ heavy infantry, and Harper in her armor was nearly half again as large as the fallen alien.

Shaking her head, she nodded silently to the Army riflemen standing guard over the reptilian. Their lighter railguns were still trained on the bulky alien, even as it lay unconscious on the ground.

On closer inspection, its wounds had even stopped bleeding. Harper shook her head. What was this alien _made_ from? She ran her eyes over the half-slagged remnant of the weapon it had used to down the Alliance dropship. Hopefully Intelligence would be able to get something useful out of that wreck.

Standing back up, she nodded again to the reptilian alien's guards. "It'll live. Looks safe to move it, now." If it died, at least Intelligence would have another cadaver to examine.

She walked over to the other prisoner. The blue Humanoid — _very_ Humanoid — didn't seem to be injured at all, standing between two hulking Alliance riflemen. Through the Asari's helmet visor, Harper could see the young girl's eyes darting back and forth, looking warily around the scene.

Not that she could blame her. God only knew how the smaller alien had gone un-harmed in the middle of a firefight that intense. Four more aliens like her laid cooling in the _Defiant_ 's cargo bay, more cadavers for Humanity's scientists to investigate.

If the aliens had planned this attack, why had they let so many unarmed, lightly-armored apparent-civilians into the middle of the hangar? Going by how slow most of them were to seek cover, they hadn't even been _warned_ by their soldiers.

Stamping to a halt in front of the Asari, Harper looked down at her silently for a second. What could explain the actions of the alien soldiers? Had they so little regard for the blue-skinned civilians that they sent them forward as 'Human' shields of a sort? The Unity Captain shook her head. That couldn't be it — the Asari bodies had as many small holes from alien rifles in them as the larger markings from Human weapons fire. They'd interfered with the alien soldiers' lines of fire as much as they had those of the Humans.

Keying her external speakers, Harper spoke as softly as she could manage. In the halting 'Citadel-Standard' language that she'd picked from the smart-pads scattered amongst the bloodstains behind her, she asked "You…not-hurt?"

The Asari nodded, voice strained. "Yes."

"Good." Harper wasn't even sure if medigel would work on an alien, after all. The slurry of nanomachines and bio-matter was designed to be adaptive to a whole range of wounds, able to temporarily heal damage to bone, flesh and organs. But that was no guarantee that it would work on a truly alien physiology.

As much as she'd like to stay and talk with the only conscious alien left, Harper knew the _Defiant_ was almost ready to withdraw. The scout corvette was just about filled to capacity, with Army troopers from the downed aircraft sharing space with captured aliens and salvaged equipment.

And bodies. Far too many bodies.

The Asari's guards began moving the young-looking alien towards the _Defiant_ , Harper watching them go. She would have to follow soon enough, but she wanted to delay that as long as she could. She didn't want to board the _Defiant_ , and again face the accusing stare of Ward's shattered face-plate. She may have been barely older than him, years-wise, but she nonetheless felt that she'd failed in her duty as the elder Unity member to protect the younger.

With her Communications implants still offline and Ward dead, nobody was left who could pilot the Unity light corvette that she'd flown in on. The _E-38_ would have to be scuttled on-site.

Harper was thankful that she didn't have quite the same attachment to her ship as the Alliance sailors had to theirs. As it is, having a ship that had done so much good work alongside her blasted apart by her own scuttling charges seemed so ignominious an end.

Looking over the scene in the hangar, Harper watched as Alliance riflemen carefully carried groaning soldiers from the wreck of the dropship. They had to pick their way slowly through the blood-drenched mess on the floor between them and the _Defiant_ , the purple of Asari blood mixing with the arterial dark-red of the Human casualties.

A spike of fury flooded through her at the waste of it all. Why now? They had just barely started to get some sense of peace into the meeting. Ward and the Asari he'd been working with had seemed to be genuinely enjoying learning each other's language.

Why had the enemy's soldiers chosen to attack? The Alliance Navy reinforcements said that they'd been ambushed at the Artifact by multiple alien warships, so maybe the alien soldiers on-site had received orders from higher command to start shooting again? But why not warn their own civilians first, give the Asari at least a second or two to duck before the shots started flying?

She clenched her fists at the callousness of it all.

Her right hand twitched, refusing to curl into a fist. With another growl, Harper stomped back towards the _Defiant_. She was tired of this nonsense. All of it.

* * *

Captain Eumenia Sanvir clenched and un-clenched her jaw, staring straight ahead at the display screen at the front of the _Nefrane_ 's bridge. The whole squadron had jumped at the same time, closing in on the destination Relay. They would emerge in less than ten seconds.

And Goddess only knew what they'd run into. They'd thrown together a few ideas on how to deal with the one alien warship they knew about, but for all they knew the enemy had yet to reveal some new weapon or defense that would render the Citadel squadron's planning moot.

She sat on the silent bridge, watching the counter tick down towards zero. Her crew had heard the discussions. They knew what they were facing.

And what they _could_ be facing. The last time a First Contact had gone this badly, the Batarian war had taken nearly twenty years — and tens of millions of lives on both sides — before the defeated Hegemony had been forced to concede defeat. How long would this war with these 'Humans' last?

The timer passed three seconds, and she sat up straighter in her command chair. Now they would see if their tactics would work against this new threat.

* * *

At the first warning from the _Warsaw_ 's sensor officer, Captain Hannah Shepard snapped her helmet back onto her head. It may be uncomfortable, but if the heavy cruiser took a hit that penetrated all the way to the crewed compartments, it could save her life. "Artifact's lighting up, ma'am! Somethings coming through!"

And the joint squadron she presided over represented the only Human force within several weeks' journey. "Ready port broadside, hit whatever comes into sight first, and hit them hard." Alliance heavy cruisers had an even heavier secondary armament than Unity warships of the same mass, so if the _Shanxi_ had been able to handle several enemy warships by herself, the _Warsaw_ and her squadron should be able to match that accomplishment.

What worried her was the long-range direct-fire capabilities of the enemy warships reported by the _Shanxi_. However the aliens had managed to accelerate their projectiles to such speeds, they were far faster than even the spinal-mounted railguns boasted by any of Shepard's squadron.

The balance of power, as she understood it, seemed to favor Human warships at ranges less than a thousand kilometers, with the known enemy warship classes enjoying the advantage at ranges beyond that.

However, it had yet to be seen how the alien warships would stand up to the real striking power of both Alliance and Unity naval doctrine: the heavy torpedo bomber. All three of the Unity warships had launched their wings already, matched by the Alliance light carrier SSV _Taranto_.

The forty craft waited more than a light-minute away from the Artifact, ready to engage their specially-designed rapid-transition FTL drives and strike when and where needed.

* * *

The lead ships in the formation were Turian, a cruiser formation led by the HWS _Ariminum_ flanked by two frigate squadrons. Two-hundred kilometers behind them were the Asari warships, the super-heavy cruiser _Taskera_ leading the cruisers of Sanvir's squadron. Given the very strong laser defenses of the human warships as reported by the _Taskera_ , the escort carrier HWS _Tarraco_ had remained behind, guarding the civilian vessel MSV _Entora_ carrying the diplomats who were supposed to have prevented this whole mess from starting in the first place.

Well, most of the diplomats. While the sensors of the Citadel warships worked at full speed to read the area around the squadron, Captain Sanvir snorted softly to herself. That one pushy matriarch had managed to talk her way aboard the _Taskera_ with Commodore T'Leran. All those upper-class families were one great big 'Good Old Girls' club, as far as Eumenia could tell.

The displays blinked as the sensors fed their data in, and her heart leaped up into her throat. The Humans _did_ have reinforcements. Two dreadnought-scale vessels hovered over the wreckage of the HWS _Coriovallum_ , with another dreadnought escorted by two cruisers waiting just over a thousand kilometers away.

As it happened, almost the perfect distance for Commodore T'Leran's plan.

The citadel warships fired as one, two rounds each. The heavier projectiles of the Turian navy flew side-by-side with the lighter rounds fired from Asari-built vessels, converging on the nearer of the two dreadnoughts near the _Coriovallum_.

As soon as both volleys had been fired, the whole formation jumped to conventional FTL simultaneously. Exiting FTL a second later almost on top of their target from earlier, the ready GARDIAN laser banks walked their concentrated fire down one flank of the same Human dreadnought, boiling hundreds of square meters of armor plating away. At a range of less than a hundred kilometers, the weapons were still near-perfectly coherent when they hit.

As soon as the high-definition sensors on the citadel warships detected movement from the rows of turrets along the human dreadnoughts' flanks, the formation as a whole jumped back to FTL, streaking away from the battle at maximum speed.

Captain Sanvir let out a breath she hadn't realized that she had been holding. The whole strike had lasted barely fifteen seconds. "Engineering, how's the drive core holding up?"

"Static buildup is within tolerances, ma'am, but just barely. We can pull a trick like that _maybe_ one more time before something gives out down here."

"That shouldn't be necessary." The captain assured, as the formation dropped out from FTL near the small gas giant in the system, several light-hours away from the relay. "We're dumping charge now."

As far as they were from any known Human sensors, there should be plenty of time for the citadel warships to rid themselves of the dangerous static charges generated by such rapid cycling of their eezo cores. That was a bit on the fast side, even for the hit-and-run tactics that the Asari warships had been designed for. Goddess only knew how bad the Turian crews had it onboard their vessels, lacking the enlarged static capacitors of the Republic's ships.

So it was only fair that the Hierarchy warships approached the outer layers of the planet first, with the Asari vessels standing guard. One could never be too careful, after all.

Eumenia took a moment to glance around the bridge. She nodded with a small smile as each of her bridge officers handled their departments coolly, ensuring that the ship and her crew were ready for the next engagement. The _Nefrane_ may have been a veteran of many anti-piracy patrols and even a few small fights, but it was a long jump from that to a close-range fight against actual warships. It was satisfying to see how well her people took to the transition.

Just then, a comms request came in from T'Leran. Accepting, Eumenia nodded in greeting as the Commodore's face appeared on the forward view-screen. "Commodore."

Holding up one hand to signal 'wait,' the Commodore was silent. A moment later, the display split into two parts, adding Captain Gallus to the conversation.

Lowering her hand, T'Leran spoke. "Now that everyone's here, I have an update for our rescue mission to the planet. As the Human naval presence in this system has been reinforced, we cannot assume that their ground troops have not been added-to as well."

Captain Gallus nodded. "Naturally. But how will that change our deployment plans? The transports only have so many drop-ships, and they're already fully-tasked for the landing."

"It is not a matter of _quantity_ , but of _quality_ of the soldiers we will be deploying." The Commodore stood aside, as another Asari strode into the camera's view field. A quartet of commandos stood behind the matriarch, wearing the uniform of the matriarch's House.

Eumenia wracked her memory, trying to recall just which matriarch this was, again. She'd been briefed when her squadron had met up with the diplomats' vessel, but that was days ago. She couldn't keep the names and faces of the few hundred influential matriarchs in the Republics straight. It wasn't like you ever saw one of those high-and-mighty politicians out on the fringes of Citadel space, where Eumenia's work took her.

Frowning, she took in the matriarch's armor. That was _not_ some dolled-up dress more at home on the Presidium. That was a Serrice Council suit, and one of the top-flight ones, too. The camera was even able to pick up the few small scrapes and gashes on the armor, the edges of the thin, ultra-strong plates worn slightly.

A _well-used_ suit of combat armor, then.

That got Captain Sanvir's memory going, finally. There was that one she'd read about half a century ago, the one who had abruptly retired as Armali's Chief Hunt Mistress. What's-her-name—

"My commandos and I will be first on the ground." Matriarch Benezia T'Soni stated in a calm voice. "Have your soldiers ready to support us, if it should prove to be necessary."

* * *

AN1: Seriously, I could not go fast enough to get Harper to know that Wrex was a "Krogan." I was running out of ways to describe him from her POV besides "alien" or "reptilian."

AN2: One of the things I really wanted to play with in this story was the idea of different character POVs and 'unreliable' narrators. In far too many stories (in general, not just on this site) whenever a POV character makes an observation, it turns out to be at least mostly accurate.

Example: In many ME fanfics I've seen, the Humans making First Contact with the various Citadel peoples usually guess at first sight that 'those spiky metal-plated aliens _look_ like predators, so they must be military-focused' or 'those hot blue chicks _look_ nice, so they must be a relatively peaceful people.' Of course, that is mostly true within the ME universe, but one rarely sees stories where, say, Humans make First Contact with Turian civilians or a bunch of Asari mercenaries, and draw the (mostly wrong) conclusion that the Turians are peaceful while the Asari are militant.

What I'm working with is trying to make each belief that the characters in my story come up with make sense given the information available to them. But, like in real life, those beliefs are not necessarily accurate.

AN3: Also, I can't find a reference as to when, exactly, the Batarians joined the Citadel society. It's only said that it was after the Volus. IIRC, the Volus also joined the Citadel before the Turians did, so before the Rebellions. So that leaves quite a large range. However, since the earliest canon event with the Batarians involved was their bombardment of Mannovai in ~1785, I'll go ahead and assume that they joined somewhere around ~1700 – 1750. That would make them one of the more recent joiners to the Citadel, which seems to fit with them being mostly isolated on the 'fringes' of Council space. (Of course, being slaving-North-Korea-in-space certainly doesn't help, either). At any rate, I'm pretty much making up history for them out of whole cloth, giving them a much, much larger First Contact War to justify why they hate the Citadel peoples so much.

AN4: I really should be studying for my exam tomorrow, or doing the homework that's due on Friday, or working on the homework for Monday, or the presentation for Wednesday, or the report for next Friday, but I'm having too much fun writing this instead. Advice for everyone out there: Do _not_ take 18 credits in your last year of college, even if it lets you pick up two minors to go with your degree. This schedule is absolute _murder_.

AN5: I'm taking some of the general ideas of Benezia's personality and history here from LogicalPremise's 'Sheep & Battle-Chicken' series. Don't worry, I'm not going quite as grimdark with the AU elements as _that_ amazingly-well-written story went. (For anyone who may not be familiar with it, I _strongly_ recommend looking it up on this site.)


	14. Torpedoes Away!

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 14

Started: 23 February 2017

Published: 27 February 2017

* * *

Even as the SSV _Warsaw_ shuddered from the recoil of her lateral batteries, Captain Shepard saw the enemy contacts disappear from conventional sensors. A moment later, and they reappeared, packed around the cruisers UWS _Shanxi_ and UWS _Liaoning_.

Even as the human warships slewed their turrets over to track the targets, the aliens fired, concentrating fire on the _Shanxi_. The Unity warship disappeared in a glowing fog of ablated armor plating.

Shepard frowned. The enemy couldn't hope to do much at this range. They could _maybe_ cripple the _Shanxi_ , but as soon as the rest of the squadron got their guns around, the alien vessels would be hammered to pieces at such short range.

No sooner had the thought flicked through her mind than the enemy warships once more disappeared. She blinked in surprise. Evidently the aliens used a different method of FTL, somehow managing to pull off the trick in realspace, but two FTL jumps in so few seconds was downright unbelievable. Even the purpose-built dual-core drives of human bomber-craft needed a good thirty seconds between jumps.

But why would the enemy jump in like that? Sure, they'd heavily damaged the _Shanxi_ 's outer armor, but— her eyes widened at the realization. She triggered the squadron-wide command channel "All ships, emergency evasive!" Assuming the enemy were as competent as their precise maneuvers indicated, there was only one reason they'd risk such a dangerous close-range pass.

Sure enough, even as the human ships sluggishly began to lumber aside, a salvo of super-high-velocity rounds shot in, slamming into the damaged broadside of the _Shanxi_.

The Unity cruiser vomited fire as the shots struck home, piercing through the weakened armor plating and detonating her forward capacitor banks. The ship's icon on the tactical readout flickered, before shifting to the blood-red of critical damage.

" _Shanxi_ , damage report!" Her request was met with silence. Shit. Captain Shepard keyed her communications back to the _Warsaw_ 's local channel. "Sensors! Tell me you've got a trace on the enemy warships' exit vector!"

"Faint trace, ma'am! Not enough to get a trajectory on them!"

"Understood. Work with the rest of the squadron, maybe we can triangulate something usable." With the ships so tightly bunched up, it was a shot in the dark. But she needed to know where the enemy had gone. Or if they were coming back for another pass.

Back to the squadron-wide net, she ordered "Frigate squadrons, picket duty, twenty thousand kilometers. Full anti-bomber dispersion." That formation was designed to defend against high-speed bomber runs, but hopefully it would give the heavier and less-maneuverable cruisers in the center enough warning to avoid further damage.

* * *

"Bloody Hell, what was that!?" shouted Captain James Lyster as his SB-40 'Narwhal' torpedo-bomber lit up with warning alarms. By the alarmed shouting coming from the other three crew of the small craft, he wasn't the only one surprised.

"Grav sensors just spiked!" responded Corporal Corning, the sensors operator. "Something big or fast just flew right the Hell past us!"

"I know!" interjected Hale, the engineering tech. "Both drive cores just overloaded! We're dead in space for two minutes until they re-boot!"

"Shit!" Lyster quickly began flipping switches in the cockpit, shutting down all non-essential systems on the craft. Toggling the group-wide channel, he ordered "All craft, full stealth. We're gonna be holes in space for the next few minutes."

Back to his bird's internal channel, he added "Sorry Corning, you're going to be blind for a bit."

As the Scotland-born corporal snorted, Captain Lyster again changed communications channels. This needed to be reported. "FLIGHTOPS, Swordfish One. What looked like the whole alien fleet just over-flew us, our drives are down for two mikes."

"What! Say again, Swordfish One?"

Lyster rolled his eyes. "I _said_ , those damn xenos just swamped our boats with their damn grav wake!"

"Ah, copy, Swordfish. Wait one."

While waiting, Lyster peered over his shoulder. The small crew cabin of the ' _Glasgow Lady_ ' was positioned with the pilot in the front, followed by the sensors operator, weapons specialist, and engineering tech in the rear. Sergeant Walls, his weapons operator, was being her usual quiet self. "Hey Jenny, everything good with your systems?"

He could see from his own display that the bomber's weapons systems hadn't been affected at all by the grav spike, but he wanted to hear it from the expert directly.

"Yes, sir. All systems green, ready to fire on command." Came the monotone reply.

There was something _wrong_ with that woman. He knew she was from one of those odd, half-normal-human, half-Unity families, but none of the full hive-minders he'd ever met were as robotic as Sergeant Walls.

Shaking his head, James turned back around. The view out of the cockpit windows was as boring as ever, a near-blinding sea of stars amongst the endless black. It wasn't like the squadron was within eyeball-range of anything significant. Even the other bombers of the group weren't visible, with their external lights turned off for combat.

Just as he was beginning to get bored, the squadron's flightops officer came back on the comms system. The Major's voice was excited as he relayed "Swordfish One, recon order. Proceed towards planet four, full sensor-sweep at five light-seconds out. Command believes enemy warships withdrew to planet-four orbit. Permission to engage at discretion if enemy encountered."

Captain Lyster felt a wide grin overtake his face. Now _that_ was more like it! "FLIGHTOPS, Swordfish One. Copy on orders, moving as soon as our drives are back up!"

After relaying the instructions to the rest of his group, Lyster began bringing the bomber's systems back online. After who-knew-how-many endless training runs, he might actually get to pull off a live-fire run. Fear and excitement battled for hold over his mind, but excitement was winning handily.

The slow-Navy boys in the big warships may have had all the fun this far, but it was time for the fast-Navy strike craft to have their day.

* * *

As her forward capacitor bank detonated, an immense power surge rocketed through the internal networks of _Shanxi_ 's group-mind. The buffers managed to keep the dangerous current from reaching the organic bodies which composed her, but the support machinery needed to keep 'her' whole were fried instantly.

 _Shanxi_ collapsed into unconsciousness.

Lieutenant Zheng pitched forwards as her sarcophagus split open, dumping her unceremoniously onto the padded floor of her quarters.

Sagging to her knees, she grasped weakly at the pounding in her skull. She hadn't been through a full emergency-dump since training. The years may have dulled the pain of _that_ memory, but the lancing ache in her head brought it back all-too-clearly.

Blinking, she dry-heaved, doubling over as the nerves in the rest of her body protested the sudden movement. At least her automatic inhibitors kept her from vomiting up her breakfast inside her helmet.

Closing her eyes, she held herself as still as she could manage, waiting for the pain of the sudden transition back to individuality faded. As she passed forty seconds, the aches dulled away enough that she could stand up.

She pinged the _Shanxi_ 's Network. The machines needed to unite the whole crew as one mind may be destroyed, but the lower-powered standard Network should be okay.

Well, it _would_ be okay, once it finished re-booting. Five more minutes, then.

It looked like she would have to do this the old-fashioned way. Linking her suit's radio to the ship-wide channel, she reported "Helm here, I'm alive. Any casualties?"

Captain Hall responded "Good to hear it, Zheng. You're the last one back up, no crew casualties reported."

"But the drive is down, and the forward half of the ship is slagged to Hell." Chipped in the _Shanxi_ 's engineering officer. "We're down half of our maintenance drones, and the rest are fully-tasked trying to patch over the damage."

The Captain's voice was grim as he added "It looks like we're stuck for the foreseeable future. All the passages out of the crew sections are melted closed, and the external communications systems are down." He sighed. "Hopefully _Liaoning_ can pull us out of this system back to friendly territory. We'll need a good work-over in a shipyard to get _Shanxi_ operational again."

* * *

Captain Eumenia Sanvir sighed as the _Nefrane_ finally entered the gas giant's magnetosphere, the tense atmosphere on the cruiser's bridge loosening as the near-fatal levels of static charge in the warship's capacitors began to bleed away.

She glanced at the timer. Another three minutes and the squadron would be ready to set out again. The Turian warships had been the first to vent their static, and were now standing watch as the troop transports as well as the Asari vessels took their turn. Once all the ships were done, the formation as a whole would set out for the Prothean city-planet, to rescue the archaeological team there.

"Ma'am?" Her sensors officer asked. "We've got a very faint sensor reading, out on the limit of our sensors."

Eumenia bolted upright in her padded command chair. "FTL trace?"

"Doesn't look like it, ma'am. Too localized, none of the eezo scattering left by an FTL drive."

"All right. Keep an eye on it, just in case." Captain Sanvir regretted that the squadron hadn't had the time to properly scan the human warships during the short-but-intense fight earlier. The citadel forces didn't have a good picture of the emissions spectrum from the aliens' warships eezo cores, so their sensors were working over-time to scan the whole range of the energy-band for possible signs of incoming enemies.

She tapped in a command for the Turian warships in their higher orbits to spread out and keep their weapons hot. Better to err on the side of caution, after all.

* * *

After their first sensor-sweep showed a number of gravitational anomalies close together in orbit of the gas giant, Lyster's group had once more gone full stealth, running as dark as they could. The small tunnels they'd bored through the gravitational plane as they emerged back into realspace were hopefully small enough to evade detection, but he didn't know how good the aliens' sensors were.

Now the sixteen strike craft of the mixed Alliance and Unity formation were re-positioning as far towards the top of the gas giant's gravity well as they could. That should let them dive in on the alien warships as fast as doctrine demanded, giving the enemy the shortest response window possible.

They just needed to get their scout craft in first, to mark the targets for the bombers' high-speed runs.

"Swordfish bravo-one, ready to go poke about!"

Lyster shook his head. He could never understand what made the scout-craft pilots so eager about their job. At least the bomber crew got to lug megatons-worth of nuclear ordinance around. Scout craft were just as many sensors as could be squeezed into a modified bomber hull, stripped of its weapons.

And most of its armor. Those pilots were _insane_.

"Copy, bravo-one." Lyster eyed the ready-board for the rest of the group. "All birds ready for their runs, we'll move on your signal."

"Copy. Bravo-one, departing!"

There was no flash as the modified Narwhal bomber disappeared from sight, its modified secondary FTL drive slipping her through the grav plane with minimal disturbance. It also meant that the craft wouldn't keep her energy from the top of the grav well, meaning that she'd be sitting near a dead-stop relative to their targets.

Good for spotting, but very dangerous.

A moment later, and Swordfish bravo-one's twanging voice came back, this time through the low-detectability pulsed-wave system bouncing messages along the grav plane. "Bravo-one here, confirm enemy targets. Huh."

"Anything special, bravo-one?"

"Nah. They're all just sittin' down there in the planet's outer atmosphere. Look like a bunch o' damn cows goin' down to a watering hole, or something."

Lyster closed his eyes in frustration. If bravo-one didn't still have that damn cowboy hat emblem on his helmet, James would be amazed. "Copy, bravo-one. Targets marked?"

"Marked now! Should be easy pickins!"

"Copy." Captain Lyster fed the data received from bravo-one into the target-assignment systems of his group's aircraft. Considering the small, heavy-destroyer-at-largest sizes of the alien craft, the automatic systems assigned one bomber to each target, starting at the largest warships and working down.

The two-megaton warheads of the bombers' torpedoes were designed to mission-kill even the largest of human vessels in a single hit. They should make quick work of the smaller alien vessels. "Targets assigned. All craft jump on my mark."

He paused, thinking. The alien warships had over-loaded his crafts' systems earlier just by flying past. They seemed to disturb the gravitational plane far, far more than their dimensions would indicate. "Mark exit points five-thousand kilometers from targets. We'll give them a wide berth."

As the other pilots acknowledged his orders, he fed power from the Narwhal's capacitors to the drive. The increasing-pitch whine of the drive as it spooled up, ready to punch a hole through the gravitational plane.

"Mark in three…two…one."

Fifteen craft disappeared as one. In their wake, they left only blindingly-bright flashes of light as the crudely-cut grav-plane holes snapped shut in explosions of high-energy particles.

* * *

"Update, ma'am! Major grav spike, right on top of the previous anomalies!"

"Engineering, halt static dump! Helm, get us up and out of this well as soon as we're ready to move again!" Captain Sanvir snapped orders. With the eezo cores disengaged to allow for the warships to dump their dangerous levels of static, the vessels could not maneuver. At least the Turian warships in their higher orbits could provide some covering fire.

"New anomaly, five-thousand kilometer range! It's—Goddess!"

Eumenia could only agree as she watched in shock as fifteen projectiles snapped into existence, closing on her formation at over a thousand kilometers per second.

"PD, firing!" Called out the _Nefrane's_ weapons officer. The whole squadron fired as one, GARDIAN lasers sending pulses of infrared energy towards the incoming fire.

Instantly, the targets multiplied, the larger contacts splitting off and turning away from the citadel warships even as another fifteen smaller targets continued on their original track.

Captain Sanvir frowned as the energy-output of the larger targets increased even further. They were _really_ working to distance themselves from her warships.

Or the second group of contacts. Her eyes widened. Missiles? At that range, and so few? Her blood ran cold as she remembered what Commodore T'Leran had reported about the enemy's use of high-yield warheads. "PD, target the missiles!"

As the smaller contacts passed the outer layer of the formation, one of them was finally clipped by the GARDIAN array of a Turian frigate as it passed within five kilometers of the light warship.

The cataclysmic explosion as the energy equivalent of two megatons of TNT detonated slapped the frigate aside, its hull shattered.

But council GARDIAN laser systems were designed to deal with the lighter missiles of Turian fighter-craft, not the armored torpedoes that they were now attempting to destroy. The flexible lenses were following their programmed instructions, selecting precision shots over the powerful blasts reserved for targeting other warships.

Of the fifteen torpedoes launched, a full five of them reached their targets even through the defensive fire of the reinforced citadel squadron.

The _Aurena_ took a hit directly where her coolant-column met her main hull. The core of the light cruiser simply ceased to exist, the upper-half of the column and the tips of her wings shooting out of the explosion.

The frigates _Domneta_ and _Lerranti_ were consumed by another fireball, even as the transport HWS _Teskatto_ was split in half by a near-miss.

The light cruiser HWS _Igniphex_ disappeared from the squadron data-net as her overloaded particle shields failed to absorb the influx of high-energy particles, triggering a fatal detonation of her eezo core. Devoid of power and life, the Turian warship began to sink slowly down towards the gas giant, her hull glowing with instantly-lethal levels of radiation.

The flagship _Taskera_ proved to be unbelievably lucky, a torpedo racing clean through her central cavity without detonating. The transport _Pioveera_ , fifty kilometers behind her, was not as fortunate as the torpedo slammed into her, instead.

Lastly, the _Nefrane_ herself. Thanks to her location at the other side of the squadron's formation from where the bombers had started their runs, she had enough time to get her main thruster online. Even as the GARDIAN lasers boiled away the ablative armor from the front of the torpedo, the _Nefrane_ 's main thruster ignited, forcing the light cruiser out of the way.

The torpedo sparkled as non-reacted antimatter particles in the _Nefrane_ 's thruster exhaust played over its less-armored hull. A moment later, it detonated less than five kilometers from the cruiser.

Captain Sanvir's head slammed backwards into the headrest of her chair, bruising her upper crest. The bridge lights cut out, replaced by the eerie blood-purple illumination of the emergency lighting.

Blinking away the stars that danced in her vision, Eumenia barked out between coughs "Engineering! How bad is it down there?"

"Main core held, but just barely, ma'am!"

"And damage control?"

The light cruiser's damage-control officer responded, the young matron's voice worried. "Aft armor integrity is nearly gone, ma'am, and the barriers covering the aft hemisphere are completely burned out. We'll need at least a half-hour to effect repairs."

"Understood. Get started on those right away."

"Ma'am."

Eumenia slumped back in her chair, watching as the fifteen original enemy contacts disappeared again with a bright flash. "Sensors, I don't suppose you could follow them?"

"No, ma'am. They just…disappeared."

Captain Sanvir shook her head. "All right." That wasn't like any eezo-core FTL drive _she'd_ ever heard of. Part of the mystery of 'alien' life, she supposed.

Her wonder shifted to a sharp ache in her chest as she looked over the squadron casualty readout. Two light cruisers lost, both transports destroyed, and three frigates gone as well.

Thousands of lives, both Turian and Asari, extinguished in seconds. Many of whom she'd worked with for years, if not decades.

Her chair's communications-system chimed.

Shaking her head to clear the shock, she answered. "Yes?"

Commodore T'Leran's face appeared on the display. "How soon will your squadron be ready to move?"

Eumenia quickly looked over the reports forwarded from her other ships. "We can _move_ now, ma'am, but the _Nefrane_ 's aft-facing defenses are ineffective, and we'll need to get a rescue operation mounted for the _Igniphex_." The Turian light cruiser was still sinking down towards the gas giant.

"We must move immediately. We do not know how rapidly the humans can re-arm their fighter craft for another attack. We'll have to grab the archaeologists and fight our way out of the system."

"But the _Igniphex_ , ma'am?"

T'Leran sighed before continuing. "The _Igniphex_ is glowing with more radiation than a Krogan birthday party. There's nothing we could do for her crew. The ship will slide into the gas giant in less than ten minutes, so we'd be hard-pressed to do anything for the ship itself."

Eumenia closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. As much as she hated it, the Commodore was right. "Very well, ma'am. We can move out on your order."

* * *

The SSV _Defiant_ rocked softly as the scout corvette climbed up through the planet's atmosphere. The rolling motion was almost comforting.

Almost.

Corporal Nilsson sat with his back propped against the aft bulkhead of the cargo bay, watching over the wounded from his weapons team. The Navy corpsman had assured him that Cooper would live, but he was being kept unconscious until they re-joined the Alliance squadron sent to rescue them, where the casualties could be handed over to the more extensive medical facilities onboard the larger vessels. At least he was the only significant casualty from Ibrim's team. The riflemen behind them had suffered worse, with their lighter armor.

Ibrim looked over the rest of the 'cargo' in the bay. At least the aliens had come off worst of all. An even dozen of them, of three different types, were laid out in what little room could be found in the bay. Off to one side, the conscious alien prisoner was talking to the helmet-less Unity Captain.

Just then, the unconscious Frenchman stirred, heat lolling to one side. Ibrim leaned over, patting his comrade on the shoulder. "Welcome back, sleeping beauty. Had a nice nap?"

Durand groaned, mumbling "Mon _Dieu_ , my head. What hit me?"

"Some sort of anti-vehicle cannon, by the looks of it."

"And Cooper?"

"He'll live. Kept unconscious until we get to proper medical treatment."

"Good." Durand carefully pushed himself upright, leaning his helmeted head back on the wall next to Ibrim. "You get the guy who hit me?"

"Yeah." The corporal pointed towards the mound of scales and flesh in the corner of the bay, watched over by four riflemen as well as Brown's heavy railgun. "He got it worse."

"Huh." Ibrim glanced to the side, seeing that Durand was not looking where he had pointed. "And who's _she_?"

Nilsson laughed. "I should have figured you'd notice the _other_ alien first. As to who she is?" He shrugged. "Some xeno civilian, by the looks of it. Got caught in the middle of the firefight along with a few others like her, but lived, somehow."

Durand chuckled in response, before groaning and grasping his side where the shrapnel had been removed. Medigel's healing effects lasted long enough to reach permanent treatment, but the numbing effects wore off faster than most soldiers would prefer. "Figures. We run into hot blue-alien-space-chicks in the middle of a Goddamned _warzone_." He looked over at Ibrim. "You owe me fifty bucks, now."

"Pff. The bet was for _green_ -skinned space babes."

"Blue's close enough."

Just as Ibrim was about to answer, the lighting in the cargo bay dimmed, replaced with the dull red of emergency lights. "Well, like that, I suspect."

No sooner had he spoken than the ship-wide radio channel came alive, one of the _Defiant_ 's small crew warning them "Looks like we've got enemy warships in orbit, having it out with the Navy. We're going to stay low in atmosphere, try to get up to orbit somewhere that we won't get downed immediately. Stack up on the aft sides of the bulkhead and dividers, forward acceleration begins in two minutes."

The two troopers exchanged a glance. With their heavy weapons and armor, Nilsson's team had already staked out their own space at the rear of the _Defiant_ 's small cargo bay. While the two men worked at tying their equipment down using the cargo-tieoff strips recessed into the flooring, the rest of the troops around them burst into motion, moving to secure themselves and their equipment against the impending acceleration.

Loud, thumping footsteps from their left grabbed the two soldiers' attention as they were finishing. The Unity Captain with her alien charge sat down against the bulkhead next to them. The heavily-armored officer nodded to Ibrim. "Hope you don't mind if we grab some room here, corporal."

"Naturally, ma'am." Nilsson certainly didn't want a tonne-and-change of armor coming loose and sliding around the cargo bay.

Reaching down, the officer pulled the tie-down straps from their slots on the floor, wrapping them securely around her legs.

After a few seconds of silence, Durand spoke up. "Well, are you going to introduce us to your friend?"

The Unity officer looked at him out of the corner of her eye before responding "Perhaps once we're out of danger, here. It's been a long day for everyone."

As if to punctuate her statement, the _Defiant_ lurched as her primary impellers went to full power, forcing the craft forwards at nearly five gravities of acceleration. As the warbling of the impellers increased in pitch and volume, it felt as if Ibrim's helmet was rattling against the back of his skull.

After a few seconds of the crushing acceleration, the force subsided as the _Defiant_ slowed her pace. The voice from the cockpit came back "All right, we're now cruising on out of the hot-zone. Stay buckled in, kids, but we should be—" a loud klaxon could be heard as a background of the crewman's voice, which jumped two octaves higher "Negative, brace, Brace, BRACE!"

The impeller noise shifted abruptly, now pushing the inhabitants of the cargo bay to the side instead of backwards. Ibrim locked his armor in place, letting its death-grip on the tie-downs hold him in place.

Not two seconds after the shift, a deafening _clang_ accompanied the hull plating under him bucking sharply. With the breath knocked out of him, Ibrim struggled to breathe as the ship's acceleration once again shifted, now pressing him into the wall at his back.

As his vision was just starting to grey out, another cataclysmic impact. Ibrim had a split-second to feel the whiplash before his helmeted head rocked forwards before slamming back into the wall.

Stars bloomed in his vision as he lost consciousness.

* * *

"Ma'am, we've lost the _Antietam_ and _Bull Run_."

Captain Hannah Shepard clenched her jaw as the two frigates disappeared from the tactical readout, torn apart by the rapid-fire cannons of the alien attackers. "Tighten the formation, draw the tin cans in closer." She'd had the lighter warships set out further from the main formation of cruisers and destroyers, hoping that the widened sensor net would give her heavier warships more time to dodge incoming shots.

But the enemy had reacted by ignoring the core of her formation, instead chewing through the lighter frigates exposed at the perimeter. The thinly-armored ships were designed more for heavy anti-fighter defenses, not for straight ship-to-ship combat. But her cruisers were too slow to close to effective weapons range of the alien vessels, who kept withdrawing with their ludicrously-high mobility whenever she tried to bring them to battle.

At least her frigates hadn't died alone. The hulks of the Alliance warships floated less than a hundred kilometers from an alien frigate-sized vessel and two corvette-analogues. It seemed that the laser-heavy armament of the frigates, at least, was quite effective against the enemy's defenses.

Perhaps the enemy vessels were designed more to evade their own high-speed kinetic projectiles rather than withstand pulse-laser fire. It would certainly fit with their ship design, as even their smaller warships mounted powerful coaxial cannons. Their frigate-sized ships seemed more of a match for Alliance destroyers, foregoing heavy laser defenses in favor for more anti-ship weaponry.

"Engineering!" Captain Shepard's shout was punctuated by the shuddering of the ship as another projectile glanced off of the _Warsaw_ 's angled armor. "Time until next jump?"

"Sixty seconds, ma'am! Core's still re-setting!"

The larger FTL cores used for cruisers took an exponentially longer time to re-set between jumps than did the smaller systems used in frigates and corvettes, let alone the specialized dual-core designs installed in bomber-craft.

At least as the _Shanxi_ had proven, the alien warships could not hope to match the firepower of a Human cruiser at close ranges. So long as her remaining cruisers, the SSV _Warsaw_ and the UWS _Liaoning_ , survived the next sixty seconds, they should be able to jump into the middle of the alien formation. A jump that short should be able to punch down and up through the grav-plane fast enough to give the enemy minimal time to get clear of the emergence zone.

"Ma'am!" The sensor officer's shout drew her attention to the highlighted corner of the tactical display. "They're firing on the _Defiant_!"

What? She watched as the two remaining destroyer-analogues in the enemy formation whirled about, pointing their bows towards the planet below. No sooner had the nimble warships completed their maneuver than they fired, shots carving glowing furrows through the atmosphere as they descended.

The _Defiant_ abandoned her upward climb, going to full acceleration and diving back down. The enemy fire tracked her, landing all around the maneuvering corvette.

Shepard frowned. Those shots were too wide for direct targeting – the enemy was deliberately aiming to miss the small ship. The only reason they could be doing that was to keep the _Defiant_ from leaving the planet. As deep as she was in the gravity well, she couldn't jump to FTL.

"All ships, focus fire on the designated destroyer-analogue." She ordered, highlighting the nearest large enemy warship. At the range they were at, the enemy would easily dodge her squadron's fire, but it may at least disrupt them enough to let the _Defiant_ escape.

The _Warsaw_ shuddered once more as her co-axial cannon spat fire towards her target.

"Ma'am! Two enemy corvette-analogues breaking off!"

Indeed, two of the smaller enemy classes disengaged from their formation, diving down into the planet's atmosphere.

And towards the _Defiant_.

Another enemy corvette-analogue came apart under her squadron's laser fire, venting atmosphere and escape pods. But the others kept up their barrage of fire towards Shepard's squadron, keeping them from accelerating forwards at their full potential.

She grimaced. The alien warships seemed to be designed for just this sort of stand-off engagement, but Human vessels certainly weren't. Alliance cruisers, especially, were meant for close-range brawls with their Unity counterparts.

"Engineering! Time until jump?"

"Fifteen seconds, ma'am!"

A whole quarter-minute until she could force the enemy to engage.

"Ma'am! New sensor contacts!"

Her eyes darted to the tactical readout. Those readings on the gravitational sensors were _not_ friendly reinforcements. And with her frigate screen drawn in close, the new arrivals were less than five seconds away at their current speed.

And that was a _big_ cluster of sensor readings.

"All ships, break off! Jump to rally Alpha as soon as your cores reset!" Rally Alpha was a point well above the system's orbital plane. Should be far out enough from anything for the squadron to re-group without interruption.

A moment later, and the new sensor contacts emerged into the fight.

"Ma'am! Two cruiser analogues, sixteen destroyer analogues, and eighty-three corvette-analogues! Designs match hostile warships!"

The new arrivals were indeed more of the angular warships that composed around half of the original enemy force. And the two cruiser-analogues at their center, nearly a kilometer long each, were swinging their bows around towards Shepard's squadron far faster than anything that size had any right maneuvering. Thankfully, the enemy reinforcements had apparently overshot the engagement, so they had to rotate nearly one-hundred and ten degrees before their main guns could fire.

But given how the coaxial cannons from the enemy destroyer-analogues had done such damage to her ships, she did _not_ want to see what weapons their cruiser-analogues could bring to bear.

As the _Warsaw_ prepared to jump, a red warning flashed onto the tactical display, highlighting the _Defiant_.

The corvette had mis-timed her evasive maneuvers, taking a hit which punched through her dorsal armor. The flickering of her data-feed indicated damage to her power system, as she veered into a flat spin. One of her impeller channels must have been severed.

Shepard flinched as the corvette's data feed cut out, the icon marking her position on the display overlapping with another one of the half-destroyed alien towers which jutted kilometers up from the planet's surface.

The _Warsaw_ finished her jump preparations, carving a hole through the gravitational plane and forcing her way through.

With the enemy reinforcements in-place, her squadron lacked the strength to reach the _Defiant_ 's crash site. Hopefully the crew survived, but they wouldn't be rescued by _Human_ efforts anytime soon.

* * *

AN1: So, I'm trying somewhat to emulate what I imagine military communications protocols would be ~130 years in the future. Of course, everything I know about that topic comes from half-remembered techno-thriller novels (Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, David Weber, etc.), so what I write bears only a passing resemblance to actual military communications.

On the other hand, 2151 is nearly a century-and-a-half in the future from now, and military communications protocols change all the time. So maybe it's just very different from current real-life practices.

AN2: It's implied that most of the species in ME have approximately the same 'visible spectrum,' but I'm playing around a bit with colors. I mean, for most societies on Earth IRL, red is the 'emergency' color, likely because it's the same color as human blood. I'm assuming that the same holds for the psychologies of most of the other ME species, so that the 'warning' color for each society varies depending on the species.

AN3: It's also surprising to me just how 'low-energy' warfare is in the ME-verse. I mean, by the codex the average dreadnought's cannon (the most powerful weapon listed) has an energy output of approximately 38 kilotons. And those are stated to take 5 hits to utterly destroy a cruiser, let alone a frigate.

Now, that 38 kilotons is approximately in the range of an average tactical nuclear warhead as developed on Earth during the Cold War. As for strategic nuclear warheads? Those often reached into the _megaton_ range. Heck, the largest warhead ever _designed_ was estimated at ~100 megatons, or equivalent to more than 2,600 hits from an average ME dreadnought's cannon. (In other words, that single warhead would probably have the energy equivalent of the throw-weight of the entire combined fleets of all Citadel-space warships per salvo).

So it's surprising to me that nuclear warheads never really come up in ME canon. I mean, forget arming fighters with disruptor torpedoes – just strap a small strategic warhead on the torpedo (there are thousands of such warheads around Earth right now, already) and one-hit dreadnoughts all day!

Even assuming that a large proportion of the energy is wasted if using a non-directional blast, that's still more than enough to destroy anything it hits. And if you armor it up enough, sure, each torpedo may end up costing as much as a frigate, but it'll just laugh at any GARDIAN defenses that the target may have.

For that matter, a larger warhead should logically be able to wipe Reapers with a direct hit. I'll have to come up with some way to balance that, later.

Anyone got some good suggestions as to why the ME-verse doesn't really use nukes all that much? I've got a few ideas that I'll throw into the story as to why only Humanity uses them, but I'm open to ideas.

AN4: On a somewhat-related note, I've decided on what I want Humanity's 'hats' for naval doctrine to be in this story. In ME canon, Humanity (well, the Systems Alliance) stands out for two main reasons: 1) heavy use of fighters, and 2) using concentrated response fleets, instead of spreading out their warships to cover all colonies.

In this story, I'm aiming for two somewhat-similar ideas: 1) Humanity here is the only faction that uses fighter-craft as the _main_ ship-killing weapons in their fleet, and 2) Due to the different ship-designs used by Humanity here than in canon, they're also much more experienced at fleet logistics.

I mean, I've written already that I didn't like the idea of canon Humanity being the only people to develop the use of fighter-craft in space warfare. Bioware tries to say that it's because Humans are the only species whose homeworld has such large oceans (besides the Hanar, naturally), and space-borne carrier doctrine evolved from that.

But in real life, plenty of nations that have never (in modern times) placed much emphasis on their navies use carriers. The Soviets, Russia, China, India, etc. The main difference is in exactly _how_ those carriers are used in their naval doctrine.

So my idea is that most of the Citadel-space governments simply have a very different carrier _doctrine_ than Humanity does. Essentially, Citadel-space carriers are defensive weapons, whose fighter screen is there mainly to defend the larger warships from missiles and to support the smaller warships (frigates, mainly) when they get into knife-fighting range of the enemy. Outside of set-piece fleet battles, fighters are mainly used in Citadel-space for patrol duty, since they're cheap enough to be used to cover the very large amount of space-borne shipping that would be going on in such a vast, spread-out society.

By contrast, Human carrier doctrine here is similar to ME canon, but even more emphasized: the bombers are _the_ strike arm of the warships. The warships exist mainly to defend carriers and supply ships from _enemy_ strike craft.

As a rough analogy, it's somewhat similar to the difference during the Cold War of U.S. versus Soviet carrier doctrine, with Humanity following American carrier doctrine and the Citadel space carrier usage being more similar to Soviet doctrine.


	15. Surrender

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 15

Started: 1 March 2017

Published: 16 March 2017

* * *

With one last heave, the jammed hatch sprung open, spilling Captain Harper and two naval crewmen out onto the hull of the _Defiant_. Tilted as the ship was at a sixty-degree angle, it had proven harder than expected to get the only clear hatch open. The larger doors over the cargo bay were far too large to open manually, and the passenger airlock on the other side of the vessel was pressed flat against the rubble beneath them.

Harper pushed herself to her feet, reporting back on the local-area communications network that was still operable after the crash. "We're through. Looks like we clipped the top of one of the sky-scrapers out here."

Indeed, the corvette was perched uncomfortably near to the sheer drop over one side of the tower. Judging by the deep scratch marks left in the metal of the alien building, it appeared that the _Defiant_ had slid into the crash side-on, just barely stopping in time to avoid plummeting off the edge to the surface kilometers below them.

Harper shivered slightly. In the sudden dark of the cargo bay, the crash had certainly seemed apocalyptic enough. With the crew compartments deep in the armored crewed areas of the ship and the cargo bay surrounded by thick, armored walls, the crew and passengers of the ship had been utterly unable to look outside. All that they had been able to do was hold on as the ship's systems blinked out due to catastrophic damage.

"Copy." Came the voice of the Alliance ship's captain. "Anything else in sight?"

And with the loss of the _Defiant_ 's systems, they had also lost all data telemetry about the naval engagement going on overhead. At least the aliens seemed content to have downed the corvette, and had not followed up with further bombardment. Given the suddenness of the enemy's attack earlier, and the complete lack of regard they showed towards even their own civilians, Harper suspected that the aliens hadn't held fire now out of mercy.

No, if the enemy hadn't destroyed the helpless _Defiant_ now, then that meant that they were aiming to capture the ship and her crew. She gazed skyward, the specifically-engineered tissues in her eyes flexing to focus her sight far beyond the natural Human limits. Several faint shapes were visible, and from the distortions around them they were just now entering the atmosphere.

And getting closer. "Enemy craft inbound. Count two." Comparing the data between her two eyes, she added "They're on-course for us. ETA five minutes at current rate of descent."

If her helmet hadn't been utterly ruined by the fight in the stairwell so many hours ago, she could have used its built-in sensors to get an even better reading on the enemy. And if her Communications implants hadn't been broken by the alien mind-frying-column-thing even earlier than that, she could have received the message that the Unity warships above _must_ have sent as they left the battle.

As it was, in the last few seconds before the _Defiant_ crashed, the data they were receiving from above had made the battle look rather even. And yet the short-range emergency communications systems in the suits available to the crew were picking up nothing. The mixed Alliance and Unity squadron had left the planet's orbit, and there had to be a reason why.

But for now, there were more pressing matters. The _Defiant_ 's captain commed again "Pull everyone back inside, seal the hatch behind you. We'll lock down the internal corridors manually."

Harper nodded. The internal defenses of an Alliance warship were designed to defend against Unity marine boarding parties.

"Copy." She smirked. Unless these aliens brought industrial-grade breaching teams, they weren't getting to the crew inside anytime soon.

* * *

Shiala eyed the matriarch warily. She hadn't seen Benezia this furious in _centuries_.

Not that the experienced diplomat _showed_ her anger clearly. But Shiala and the other three commandoes in the drop-shuttle with her had served together with their principal for nearly two centuries, now. They knew her well enough to sense the turmoil hidden behind her impassive face.

And its cause.

As the most senior of House T'Soni's commandoes, it fell to Shiala to communicate their support. She gently laid a hand on Benezia's shoulder. "Ma'am, she'll be fine. You've seen how strong her barrier is — second only to yours." She double-checked the readout on her omni-tool. "And her emergency transponder is still going, not reporting any damage."

Shiala had argued strongly _against_ having the tiny microchip implanted without Liara's knowledge, but she had yielded in the end to Benezia's insistence. At least it had convinced the senior matriarch to stop trying to have Shiala or one of the other commandoes added to whatever expeditions Liara joined.

But it had turned out to be a blessing in the end. Without the stealthy tracking signal broadcast from the transponder, they would not have known that Liara was onboard the Human frigate as it attempted to flee. Shiala had thought Benezia was about to throw Commodore T'Leran across the bridge when the near-misses had caused the small craft to so violently crash into one of the Prothean city-towers. That the Commodore had immediately ordered the ships to cease firing on the craft was probably all that had saved her from serious injury.

Benezia turned her head slightly, regarding Shiala out of the corner of one eye. With the jet-black suit of armor that she had been gifted upon her retirement, the matriarch cut a very imposing figure. The densely-woven fibers of the armor were protective enough on their own, but it was the incredibly-expensive network of superconducting fibers linking a web of eezo micro-emitters throughout the underlayers of the armor which made the suit as much a weapon of war as a work of art. The system functioned to reinforce the biotics of its wearer, bolstering Benezia's already-well-trained abilities. A gift from the Armali Council, it was utterly unique.

As the chief bodyguard for one of the most influential individuals in the entirety of Citadel space, Shiala greatly appreciated that her principal was gifted with such protection. She had but one complaint about it.

From her centuries of service to the matriarch, Shiala knew that Benezia was a woman of extremes. The elder T'Soni's iron will had developed largely as a method to keep her anger well-controlled. But to match that suppressed fury, the matriarch also deeply cared for the well-being of a great many people.

And that kindness all but disappeared when the matriarch donned her armor. Shiala wasn't certain if it was caused by the power granted by the armor's biotic enhancement, or if it just served as a reminder of Benezia's younger centuries as a commando deployed around the galaxy.

After a few seconds of silently watching her head guard, the matriarch spoke. "It is reassuring to hear that." She slowly flexed her right hand, and then balled it into a fist. As brightly-glowing tendrils of warped gravitational fields coalesced around her armored glove, she added "For the sake of those who have so attacked her, let us hope that your beliefs prove to be correct."

* * *

With a deep _boom_ , the last hatch was sealed closed, the fifteen-centimeter-thick panel sliding into place and locking. As Harper stood back, the two remaining marines of the _Defiant_ squeezed past her in the narrow corridor, setting a heavy breaching charge off to the side of the hatch. As with the two outer hatches between the crew compartments and the ship's battered exterior, anyone passing through the opening without defusing the charges first would detonate the multi-kilogram devices.

As she sidled back down the corridor, Harper eyed the boxy explosive container warily. She couldn't deny that the Unity had developed weapons of their own designed specifically to counter the militaries of the Alliance, but the multi-purpose explosives that the Alliance Marine Corps were so fond of were a particularly nasty design.

The Unity had been unable to determine where the Alliance was getting the 'element zero' that was incorporated in the charges, as the alien material had not been encountered in any of the star systems claimed by the Unity.

On the other hand, that was also a blessing. The effects of concentrated eezo fields on the gravitational-pulse communications systems that supported the Unity's great Networks were utterly debilitating, equivalent to a deafening shriek amplified directly into a normal Human's ears.

Harper gladly moved to the other side of the compartment. While the breaching charges were _directed_ explosives, she would rather be as far from them as she could. Squeezing through the narrow corridor and moving deeper into the ship, she came to where the _Defiant_ 's overworked corpsman was hurriedly looking over the wounded. Miraculously, there had been no additional fatalities from the crash, but there were plenty of broken bones and similar debilitating injuries. Harper would have offered the last of her medigel, but given the usual responses from Alliance-aligned Humans towards Unity bio-technology, she doubted it would be accepted.

And more importantly, she might need it later.

Carefully stepping across the wounded laid around the floor of the over-full medical bay, she found her destination. Commander Williams looked up at her, his left hand still clasped protectively over the red splotches which discolored the front of his lightly-armored suit. "Harper. I wondered when you'd be over."

"Came as soon as I could, after you woke up."

The Alliance officer nodded slowly. "Yeah." He coughed softly. "Corpsman Fisher told me what you did." He gingerly patted the dried blood on his suit.

"My…apologies." She knelt next to him. "I know your opinion on—"

"On having a Godless slurry of bio-engineered micro-organisms and nanomachines pumped into me without permission?"

"…Yes."

Williams groaned, pushing himself upright into a sitting position propped against the wall behind him. "Hell, it beats dying out here." He nodded to the rest of the wounded around him. "What the Hell happened after I went down, anyways? Last I remember was that metal-faced alien opening fire all of a sudden. Then a whole lot of pain, and…" he let out a slow breath, looking back up and meeting Harper's gaze "…and then you."

"Ah." She blinked, looking away. Forcing the emotion from her voice, she explained "Well, I think you slept through the worst of it. Firefight dragged on several minutes after you went down. Turns out the xenos have some sort of energy-shielding around them, soaks up kinetic rounds like you wouldn't believe. And one of them had a portable anti-tank cannon, blasted away the _Defiant_ 's laser domes facing the fight. And an Army dropship that tried to intervene."

"That's where these folks come from, I take it?" He gestured to the Army rifleman who still slept less than a meter away from him.

"Yes. We managed to force the enemy to withdraw, and then packed up everything and everyone in the _Defiant_. Didn't get airborne for more than a minute before a fleet-and-a-half of alien warships showed up in orbit, knocked us out of the sky." She grunted. "Navy had to pull back. We've sealed and mined the outer hatches. The enemy hasn't destroyed us with cannon-fire yet, so hopefully that means they want us alive." She looked back down at Williams. "We're betting that they can't cut through the hull before the Navy gets back."

He laughed weakly. "And how long will that take? I don't think it'll take the aliens several weeks to get through."

"Well, then we'll delay them as long as possible. It's that or a straight-up surrender."

"And is that such a terrible prospect?" He gestured to the crowded medbay around him. "I don't think we even _carry_ enough medical supplies to cover everyone here." He stared Harper in the eyes. " _We_ can't help everyone here."

She shook her head, scowling. "I'm not even sure that handing ourselves over to these aliens would be any better." She closed her eyes, letting out a shuddering breath. "You didn't see the way their soldiers shot _through_ their own civilians earlier. For all we know, they'll just execute the wounded straight-away." She opened her eyes, looking down at Williams. "And that means you."

Thank the Gods that her reflex-override systems kept the tears out of her eyes.

"Ah." The Commander looked away. "That _is_ different, then." After a few silent seconds, he looked back. "But there is a—"

The ship shook, a dull _boom_ reverberating through the hull. A heartbeat later, and there came a second shudder accompanied by a sharper explosion.

Harper stood back up, her left hand patting the strap that held the railgun tight across her back. "It looks like you're right. They're through the outermost hatch already, by the sound of it."

* * *

With a grunt, Ephea pulled hard on the crowbar once more.

Shiala shook her head slightly. After the team's breaching charges had barely made a dent around the apparent only person-sized entrance to the Human warship, they'd had to resort to a more brute-strength approach.

Which made the veteran commando glad that she'd brought along Ephea for this deployment. The youngest member of the four-woman team that landed along with Benezia, Ephea still had her maiden musculature.

Many of the other species in Citadel space tended to focus on the more… _attention-grabbing_ differences between the three life stages of the Asari. Larger bust sizes, more fleshed-out figures, and the gradual hardening of the _leku_ on their scalp. But few outside of the various militaries remembered that the smoother physiques of an older Asari were partly the result of lessening muscle density. An elder matriarch may be able to lift a good-sized vehicle with her biotics, but Goddess help her if you asked her to raise more than twenty or so kilograms with her muscles alone.

What it boiled down to was that Shiala as well as the other two matron-stage commandoes were relegated to providing overwatch for Ephea as the maiden heaved away. Certainly, they could have tried to warp the hatch or otherwise get through it with biotics, but it was more important to hold those ready in reserve for the fight once they got through.

Shiala glanced over to her left, where Reythe was still tapping away at her omni-tool. Opening a private channel, she asked "Anything new?"

The team's tech expert looked back, shaking her head. "No, ma'am. Scans can't get anything useful on the ship from out here. Hull's too dense." The four-century-old matron's voice came out in an excited rush. "But what I _can_ say is that there is barely any eezo in the ship. Far, far too low to be related to the ship's propulsion at all."

"Really?" Shiala returned her attention to watching over the perimeter away from her team. She knew what was coming next from Reythe's tone. The younger commando could talk for hours when it came to anything technology-related, especially starships. Not surprising for a daughter of a Quarian, and when both of Reythe's daughters had Quarian fathers as well. Goddess, even Reythe's _name_ came from the side of her ancestry that traced back to Rannoch instead of Thessia.

"Do you know what that means, though?" Reythe tapped the hull below her with a foot, even as Ephea hauled on the crowbar once more. "This certainly isn't a home system, or even a settled system. This ship got here under its own power, _without eezo_!"

"Mhm-hmm." Shiala eyed the burnt-out laser dome next to her. "It still looks enough like a normal starship to me." She pointed her left hand upwards, even as her right hand still held her rifle steady & ready to fire. "And they got here through the relay, same as us."

"True. But they certainly didn't fly all the way here from the relay at sub-light speeds. That means FTL without eezo!" Reythe let out a short sigh. "I can't wait until all this stupid fighting is over. Imagine what we could learn from examining their technology?"

Shiala chuckled. "From the sound of it, you'd want to examine their _minds_ a bit too."

"Well…" she paused. "yes."

"Finally, _something_ to drag you out of that dry spell."

Shiala regretted the words the instant she spoke them. Reythe's sudden silence only deepened the discomfort. The other commando had lost her first bondmate in the Geth rebellion, spending over two centuries alone save but for her daughter. Even now, Shiala remembered the gloomy woman whom she'd convinced to join her team back in the 2050's.

After her first sixty years as a commando of House T'Soni, Reythe had finally moved on enough to find another love. But when her second daughter was barely five years old, the Migrant Fleet had recalled all dutiful Quarians back to the fleet, and made their ill-fated push into Geth space.

The bare handful of ships that stumbled back, battered and torn, had lacked one little blue infant's father. Thirty years now since that second heartbreak, and Reythe was only beginning to recover.

"Goddess, I'm sorry, Reythe."

A deep sigh reverberated over the private channel. "Not your fault."

Shiala tried to think of something more to say, something to support her friend, but couldn't. Just as the silence was becoming awkward, she was rescued by a shout from Ephea over the team-wide channel.

"It's coming loose!"

Shiala turned to see the maiden give one last heave on the crowbar, the sealed hatch beneath her shift slightly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reythe step forward, a bright-purple warning flashing up on her omni-tool. "Wai—"

Too late. With a _bang_ , the hatch blew open, breaking free of its hinges to land nearly ten meters away. Thankfully it didn't hit anyone, but the hatch wasn't the dangerous part.

Even as the hatch flew off, trailing grey-white smoke, a powerful gravitational pulse swept over the team. Shiala felt her biotics trigger without command, a sharp sting as an unformed, mis-shapen _warp_ bit at her fingers.

Ephea wasn't as lucky. With a shriek, the maiden was flung backwards amidst an explosion of blue-tinged biotics. She skidded along the hull, sliding towards the drop-off to the building floor a good twenty meters below.

Shaking her head, Shiala tried to corral her biotics back into working order. Ephea was wearing high-quality armor like the rest of the team, but it wouldn't help against a fall that long. But her nerves still felt on-fire, like red-hot wires tracing their way through her body.

Thankfully, one of the five Asari who had landed on the hull earlier had stood back enough to avoid the effects of the trap. With a casually-outstretched hand, matriarch Benezia surrounded Ephea with a faintly-glowing field, lifting the maiden back towards the group.

When the field dissipated, Shiala caught the commando, who hissed sharply as she tried to stand. Glancing down, Shiala could see that Ephea's armor had only barely survived the forced detonation of her biotics. Several long rents in her shin armor on both legs bubbled with purple blood, as the atmosphere in her suit escaped.

Carefully laying the wounded maiden down, Shiala stood just as the team's medic ran over. Nodding to her, the head commando matched strides with Benezia as they moved over to the still-smoking hole where the hatch had been.

Reythe knelt by the side, typing furiously at her omni-tool. She looked up as the two older Asari approached. "Eezo-laced explosive, ma'am. Large one."

Benezia's scowl was visible through the clear face of her helmet. "Why was it not detected before detonation?"

The tech expert shook her head, eyes downcast. "I'm sorry, ma'am. The eezo in the bomb was far less than that in Citadel-space explosives. The scanner" she gestured to her omni-tool "confused it for part of the hatch's opening mechanism."

"I see."

Shiala spoke next, deliberately keeping her tone as calm & friendly as she could manage even with the stinging in her fingers. She'd have to have that looked at after the medic was done with Ephea. "Are there any more such eezo readings nearby?"

"Ah, yes, ma'am." Reythe brought her left arm up, rotating her omni-tool's display so that Shiala could read it. Technology may not have been the senior commando's specialty, but she could see the marked concentrations that were highlighted by the scanner.

Shiala nodded. "It would appear that there is a long hallway leading into the ship from here, and it's mined at several locations."

"Yes." Confirmed Reythe. "And we don't have the tools to crack each hatch open safely, if there's another explosive on each one."

"I see." Matriarch Benezia grabbed a hold of Reythe's left arm, holding it steady as she looked over the readout. "It seems that we are at an impasse." Relinquishing the commando's arm, she turned to Shiala. "Your recommendation?"

Shiala paused for several seconds, thinking. "We could request a breach team from one of the warships above, ma'am. They should be able to get through the hatches safely."

"And they would take far too long to arrive here. We cannot know what is being done to our people held captive inside the vessel." The matriarch turned away, looking over the expanse of hull before them. Shiala followed her gaze, seeing the large outline of the massive hatch embedded in the side of the ship. Benezia turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. "Reythe, are there any explosives detected attached to that presumed cargo hatch?"

"No, ma'am. But it's massive – we'd need a full mechanized team to force it open."

The matriarch's lip curled. Shiala would have called it a grin, but coupled with Benezia's tone it was more of a sneer. " _You_ would. _I_ don't." Turning her head back towards her goal, she stepped forwards, her hands glowing brightly. "Stand ready for entrance."

* * *

After the first detonation, Harper had rushed to the armory, where the corridor from the outer personnel hatch led to. Entering the small room she glanced to the Alliance marine who crouched behind one of the now-empty weapons racks. "Anything new, corporal?"

He looked up at her. "Nothing since that first bang, ma'am. Maybe it scared them off from pushing in deeper."

"Here's hoping." She un-slung the railgun from her shoulder, double-checking that her muscle-control implants were set to left-hand dominant. With her right hand still not fully healed, she would have to fight lefty now.

Her fingers fumbled over the railgun as she checked it for readiness, the weapon designed for use by an Alliance infantryman proving somewhat on the small side for handling by the large gauntlets of Unity heavy armor.

Just as she finally got the magazine out and checked the ammunition inside, a panicked shout came over the crew-wide radio. "They're coming in through the cargo bay!"

Harper slammed the magazine back into her railgun. "What!?"

The voice she now recognized as one of the _Defiant's_ sailors working on removing what supplies were still usable from the half-wrecked cargo bay continued "I said, they're ripping the damn hatch open down here! We're pulling back to the medbay!"

Harper shot to her feet. Looked like the xenos had brought breaching equipment with them, after all. And the _Defiant_ 's medical bay was located off the same corridor which led from the cargo bay deeper into the ship. She whirled around, the heavy footfalls of her armor resounding in the small armory.

Ahead of her, the less-armored Alliance marine and soldiers were faster on the response, already sprinting through the narrow hatchway leading aft towards the enemy intrusion. She pounded after them, turning sideways to fit through the hatch.

On the radio, she heard Captain Paulson "Anyone with a weapon, converge on the medbay! Keep the wounded out of the line-of-fire!"

The sailor from before then shouted between deep breaths, "We're out of the cargo bay, in the corridor. Hatch's sealed behind us, that'll slow 'em—" A loud _screech_ of tearing metal blotted out his voice "—FUCK THAT!" Several loud pops came through, matching the light coil-pistols issued to the sailors. "THEY'RE THRO—"

The radio came alive with a loud hiss. Flipping through the established channels, Harper found it everywhere. She grimaced. Jamming.

Harper redoubled her speed, moving as rapidly as she could through the corridors designed specifically to slow down the movement of anyone wearing the bulky armor favored by the Unity's elites. She was nearing the destination now, but the Alliance troops that had gone first were far enough ahead that she couldn't see them.

But she could hear them. A deep crackle of mixed railgun and coilgun fire echoed back down the corridor, mixed with the flatter reports that she recognized as alien small-arms fire.

Harper rounded a sharp bend in the corridor, revealing the next ten meters of near-featureless white walls leading to the last turn before the straight-shot to the cargo bay. At the corner ahead, one of the Army riflemen leaned against the wall, firing his railgun while exposing as little as possible.

Running towards him, Harper was only halfway there when the rifleman was pulled out of sight like a marionette, the railgun jerked from his hands to fall with a loud clatter. Not a moment later, and a flash of blue-tinged light spilled around the corner from where the soldier had been pulled, and his body came flying back into view.

Hitting the wall heavily, he slid to the floor, the white paneling discolored with a deep-red smear as he fell.

Harper's eyes narrowed. More of the glowing-blue _bullshit_ that she'd seen in the fight earlier. Clattering to a halt next to the corner, she quickly grabbed one of the rifleman's outstretched legs and dragged him over.

By the smoking hole in his chest-armor, there was nothing she could do for him. The ragged edges of his armor around the crater looked like they'd been pressed up against an exploding grenade, for God's sake.

But that didn't mean that he was useless. She fumbled for the three grenades attached to his armor's harness at the waist, her armored fingers unable to un-clip the small explosives. With a snarl, she ripped them free.

Propping her railgun against the wall next to her, she briefly poked her head around the corner. In the instant before a hail of weapons fire sprayed over the wall next to her and forced her back into cover, she saw them. Four aliens stood outside the hatch to the medical bay, the blue and purple skin-tones visible through their clear face-plates marking them as more Asari.

One stood facing the medbay hatch, a glowing screen projected over her raised left forearm. Next to her, two more were covering the corridor towards Harper, keeping up a steady barrage of fire.

And behind them stood a taller figure, her jet-black armor towering over the other three.

Even as Harper readied the three grenades for a throw, she frowned. In the fight earlier, none of the Asari had taken an aggressive stance. She'd assumed that they were all civilians. But these ones certainly seemed to mean business.

With a flick of her thumb, she pulled the pins on all three grenades, letting the spoons fall free. Only then did it hit her — what _was_ the fuse time on Alliance grenades? The Unity favored smaller fragmentation explosives with short fuses, but from what she remembered from her training years ago the Alliance army tended towards larger explosives with longer fuses.

But _how much_ longer? She nervously eyed the grenades, even as her timer neared three seconds. Well, better to be on the safe side. If the grenades didn't go off at the right time, at least they'd distract the enemy.

Whipping the three spherical explosives around the corner, she snapped up her railgun and peered out of cover.

* * *

Shiala felt her blood run cold as the three small objects skittered along the floor towards her. "GRENADE!"

She pushed Reythe into the slight recess formed by the hatch that their tech specialist was attempting to find a way through, and reinforced her barrier to cover them both. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Benezia glare down at the grenades as if daring them to attempt to harm her.

With a flash and a roar, the explosion swept over the four Asari.

Shiala grunted as she was pushed into Reythe's back, the blast wave knocking them both to the floor. Head ringing, she scrabbled for the rifle which had been knocked from her grip. Getting the muzzle pointed back downrange, she clenched the trigger, even as her vision swam from the aftereffects of the grenades.

To her left, she blearily saw the fourth member of the team, Meveera, hurl a _throw_ towards their assailant. Even though it hit the Human, they barely moved.

Heavy armor. At least it got them to duck back behind cover.

With a momentary lull in the fight, Shiala quickly glanced over the rest of her team. Down the corridor behind her, the fourth commando, Meveera, was standing back up, shaking her head blearily.

And behind her, a covered grate shot out from the wall, clattering to the floor loudly.

On reflex, Shiala swung her rifle around to meet the two Humans who climbed out of the new hole in the side of the corridor. Walking fire across the heavier-armored one, she scored a lucky hit on the thinner armor on its neck. The target dropped to the ground, clutching at the blood leaking from the hole.

The other swung the large-bore weapon around, pointing at Meveera's back from less than two meters away.

And it was a _very_ big gun.

* * *

Harper let out a shout of pain as her implants spasmed uncontrollably. The impact from the glowing-blue ball of energy that had forced her back into cover a second earlier had been _nothing_ compared to this.

Her vision and hearing cut out, as the ocular and auditory signal processors were forced into a hard-reset. Her body went limp as the motor-control systems crashed a fraction of a second later.

It was probably for the best. It would take almost three seconds before she could regain control of her body. At least if she _looked_ dead in the meantime, the enemy might not finish her off.

Those were the longest three seconds of her life.

Thus far.

When at last her implants finished their reboot cycle, the first thing she heard was an explosion mixed with the resounding shriek of tearing metal. Quickly grabbing her railgun, she popped back around the corner, ready to fire.

Just in time to see the _Defiant_ 's last marine vault over the body of an Army rifleman, firing a coil-pistol after the three alien combatants as they retreated through a hole ripped in the door to the medbay.

To where Williams lay.

Cursing, Harper jumped to her feet, sprinting forwards. She drew up next to the door, stepping over the body of one of the attackers. It was all but torn in half, a spreading puddle of dark-purple gore discoloring the deck-plating around the corpse.

The marine — corporal something-or-other, she couldn't remember his name at the moment— pressed up against the wall on the other side of the medbay hatch from her. The wide-barreled gun held in his hands was still hot, the air above it visibly distorted by the temperature.

That explained the dead alien and the grav-pulse that had disabled Harper earlier. An over-charged shot from a boarding shotgun would have punched through Unity heavy armor, let alone the — leather? — that the fallen enemy wore.

But it did leave the shotgun out of action for the better part of a minute. And that coil-pistol that the marine carried didn't seem to have had any effect earlier.

She'd have to be the one to finish this fight. Harper quickly peeked around the hatch into the medbay. In the brief moment before answering fire drove her head back into cover, she saw two of the aliens crouched behind the examination bed nearest to the door. One held her rifle aimed at the terrified-looking sailor still lying on the bed, while the other fired at Harper.

And behind them, the rest of the medbay was still full with the other wounded from the battle earlier. Any shots that Harper missed would hit Humans.

Shit.

The marine corporal seemed to draw the same conclusion. "Ideas, ma'am!?" he half-shouted.

Her mind raced. She couldn't shoot at the enemy — too likely to hit their own. She couldn't barrel in through the door and try to get to melee range, either — too many wounded lay on the floor, and a single mis-placed step on her part while wearing over a ton of armor could kill someone, too.

But what else could she do?

Harper was about to answer when a shout from inside the medbay drew her attention. After a moment, her mind recognized the language as the same Citadel Standard that she'd learned earlier.

"STOP!"

Harper and the marine exchanged a glance before peeking once more through the ragged hole in the medbay door.

Her heart stopped.

The two aliens she'd seen earlier were still in their positions, although they did not fire this time.

And behind them, the last alien — the taller one in the black armor — held Williams in front of her with one arm.

The other held a curved pistol with the barrel stuck under his chin.

Harper reflexively began to bring her railgun up to fire, only to be interrupted by a shout from the Asari who held her rifle aimed at the Unity officer.

She didn't hear the words. Her attention was too fixed on Williams's wide eyes as they stared back at her.

The alien who held the commander spoke again, her voice low and cold. "Lower your weapon or he dies."

* * *

AN1: So, I'm having a go at getting more in-depth on Benezia's personality and history. There really isn't that much of it shown in ME canon, which is a pity. At any rate, my idea of her is very much inspired by that created by the author 'LogicalPremise,' on this site. If you're not familiar with his work, I _strongly_ recommend reading it. All of it — and that's quite a lot.

AN2: Sorry for it taking so long to get this chapter out. It's been a busy few weeks recently for me. Going forward, I can't guarantee that I'll have another chapter out each week, or even every other week. However, I believe that I should be able to manage at least 1 chapter per month, at worst. I've got enough plot-bunnies laid out for a LOT more of this story (although most of those are ME1-3 era, so I'm holding them in reserve until we get to that point), so I'm definitely going to keep going on this story!

AN3: Also, seriously, like 90% of the Asari first names we see in canon ME end in the letter "a." The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Falere and maybe Tevos (it's not stated if that's a first or a last name). Morinth, arguably, but apparently her original name was Mirala, so she doesn't fully count. So yeah, I just realized that most of the Asari names I've been coming up with also end in "a." Hope it doesn't seem too weird.

AN4: Seriously, it's canon in ME that an Asari's breasts keep getting larger the older she gets. Poor Liara will need a back-brace by the time she hits Matron-stage. It did somewhat bug me that that was apparently the _only_ physical difference between beings whose ages could be separated by nearly a thousand years. So I'm coming up with a few other ideas, mostly for the sake of fluff alone. I mean, that's why I'm writing this story: having fun creating more background for many parts of the ME'verse.

AN5: The term 'leku' for an Asari's head-tentacles is from my personal favorite Mass-Effect-involved story, 'Psi Effect,' also on .

AN6: And yes, I do tend to focus a good bit on the Asari. Partly because I dislike how they show up in most ME fanfictions (blue space waifus who'll sleep with anyone), but mostly because I think that many of the interesting angles brought up by beings with a millennium-long lifespan, ability to truly get inside the minds of other peoples, and family ties that can span multiple species just aren't really brought up all that much.

I mean, in real life I've always found it fascinating (living in the US) to see just how many backgrounds (nationality, ethnicity, religion, etc.) that different people around me have. You can have someone (yo) who can trace their ancestry to Roman Emperors being good friends with another person whose ancestors stood watch on the Great Wall in China. Imagine how many interesting discussions you could have with someone who can trace their family tree all the way back to several different homeworlds?

AN7: One more thing: I'm going to have even the non-Humans in this story refer to dates formatted according to the modern-day Gregorian calendar. It's just a hassle otherwise to have to keep converting between at least 2 different date systems. Of course, in-story they're using their own calendars, but I'm not going to go to the depth of actually depicting that. 'Translation convention' and all that, as TVTropes would put it.

AN8: I just realized that my story has quite a lot of people getting ragdolled and thrown around. I guess that's to be expected between Citadel biotics and this story's Humanity's love of explosives.

AN9: While in canon ME most military armors seem to have fully-enclosed helmets with no clear faceplates, that isn't as fun to write about in most situations. So here, most armored helmets don't fully conceal the faces of their wearers, because that makes things more interesting.

AN10: I also just realized that I haven't given Commander Williams a first name yet. I should probably get around to that.


	16. Rescue

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 16

Started: 22 March 2017

Published: 1 April 2017

* * *

Liara stood in the dark room, listening to the increasing tempo of her breaths.

Well, calling it a _room_ was a bit much. It seemed that the Humans had locked her inside a closet. She'd tried to keep her breathing steady and slow, to stretch out the limited supply of oxygen locked in with her.

On the plus side, after a few minutes of exploring the small room by touch alone, she found a grille set into one wall through which a very slight breeze could be felt. So she wouldn't asphyxiate.

On the negative side, that grille also let her hear the gunshots and explosions outside. That finally broke her attempts at controlling her worry. Some of the gunfire was recognizably Citadel-space weaponry, but not all of it. Had the Krogan prisoner attempted to escape? But he'd looked so completely shot-up earlier.

Her heart leapt. There _was_ one other possibility. A rescue team was fighting their way on-board the ship!

She brought one hand up in a fist, ready to hammer away at the door, to let people know where she was.

And stopped. Perhaps it was the oppressive darkness pushing in on her mind, or maybe it was just exhaustion from the day thus far, but several bad scenarios rushed to the fore-front of her thoughts.

They were far out in the Terminus systems – maybe the 'rescuers' were pirates! Or worse, _slavers_. Liara knew that she would not be held captive for _long_ by such groups — if nothing else, her mother would likely take it as a personal offence to have _her_ daughter captured by slavers — but that wouldn't make the experience any better in the meantime.

Even if the new party were benevolent, they might think that Liara's pounding on the door was another Human soldier trying to get to the fight! She had _no_ intention of getting shot by some trigger-happy Hierarchy trooper, not after surviving this awful day so far.

After several more minutes of thoughts that spiraled ever-deeper towards the tragic but unlikely, her dilemma was brought to a sudden peak.

Three heavy knocks on the door.

From the outside.

Liara managed to stifle the alarmed _squeak_ at the sound, so loud in the confines of her prison. Should she respond? She didn't even know if it was one of the rescuers outside, or if they were still on-edge from the fighting! The gunfire and explosions had died away minutes ago, but that did little to calm her fears.

Tentatively, she pressed the side of her head up against the flat surface of the door. The compartment was too small for her to hide in, so there was little purpose in that. She'd considered trying to escape through the grille she'd found, but it was too small for her to squeeze into.

She tilted her head slightly, getting the sound-sensitive hearing membrane as close to the cold metal as possible.

And heard a faint voice, speaking slowly in Citadel Standard. "You said she was in this room?"

"Yes."

Her heart skipped a beat. The first voice was hard to identify – it lacked the dual tones of a Turian and the deep rumble of a Krogan, but could still be either an Asari or Batarian voice. It did seem faintly familiar, though, but she could not place it.

But the second voice, she _recognized_. It was the heavy-armored Human she'd talked to earlier.

The first voice continued, "She had _better_ not be harmed. For _your_ sake."

"She might be hurt."

"We'll see." Two more knocks on the door sent Liara stumbling backwards as the loud sounds stung her ear. After a second, the second voice continued, now audible inside the room. The speaker must have pressed her face up against the door, to speak through the heavy metal. "Liara, can you hear me?"

For the second time in a minute, Liara's heart skipped. The voice was speaking Asari Standard! And with a pronounced Armali accent.

And now that it was speaking the language she'd heard it speak before, when she was younger, she _recognized_ the voice.

Cupping her hands against the door, she responded " _Shiala_!? What in the Goddess's—" She paused for a second, thinking. If House T'Soni's head commando was here, that meant— " _Mother's_ here!?"

Liara could hear the chuckle she remembered from her biotics and combat training, several decades ago. "Yeah, and angrier than I've seen her in nearly a _century_." Shiala's voice softened. "She was _very_ worried about you. Commandeered a squadron from C-FLEET just to come out here."

The young maiden blinked. She'd day-dreamed through most of her mother's lectures on the workings of the diplomatic and political arenas centered on the Citadel, but she'd absorbed enough to have a feeling for just how much influence Benezia must have burned to get two of C-FLEET's elite ships sent all the way out into the Terminus.

Before she could respond, Shiala continued "Now, are you okay in there? The door got jammed in the fight earlier, we can't get it open easy. If you're unharmed in there, we'd like to wait for proper breaching equipment to arrive on the next shuttle from the fleet overhead. Should let us get the door open safely."

"Okay." Liara thought for a moment. That she was _safe_ now had just started to really seep over her thoughts. She carefully kept the emotion born of intense relief out of her voice — dammit, she was an adult, a seventy-four-year-old _Doctor_ ; she wasn't going to tear up in front of Shiala. The veteran commando may have known her since Liara was an infant, but she'd also trained the young maiden to keep her head in a fight. Liara would _not_ show how little those lessons had prepared her for the terror that her mind had steeped in ever since the sudden eruption of violence in the Prothean hangar so many hours ago.

"Liara?"

The worry in Shiala's voice brought Liara's thoughts back on-track. How long had she been silent, thinking? Drawing a deep breath, she responded with as level a voice as she could manage. "I'm okay in here. I can wait."

After a moment of hesitation, the commando responded "If you're sure. Shouldn't be more than ten minutes for the shuttle to get here, maybe another five or so after that to get the door open. Sound good?"

"Yes." Was all that she could respond with as her throat clenched shut at the surge of relief working its way through her body. The exhaustion of the past day finally caught up to her, her limbs seeming to double in weight in an instant. Sitting down heavily, she leaned back against the wall behind her, letting out a shuddering breath.

She was _safe_.

* * *

The alien second-in-command turned back to Harper, anger and happiness fighting for control over the purple-skinned xeno's face.

At least, that's what Harper _assumed_ those changing facial expressions meant. It may be a mistake to interpret them as if the alien were Human, but their faces were just _so_ similar.

Switching back to Citadel Standard, the alien growled at Harper "She doesn't seem to be _physically_ harmed. Lucky for you – that means you get to live."

The Unity officer blinked, carefully keeping her features neutral. People threatening her was nothing new — she'd worked with enough anti-Unity Humans before to get used to it.

But having someone threatening her who could actually _follow through_ on those threats was new. Stripped of her heavy armor and reduced to her under-suit, Harper felt all-but-naked. Smaller, even. Without the extra decimeter of height granted by her armor, the alien was even _taller_ than Harper was.

Having someone literally looking _down_ at her was _also_ a new experience. And not one that she enjoyed.

But at least the aliens hadn't shot the surviving Humans on-board, either. Still, tensions remained high on-board the ship. It wasn't helped by how outnumbered the three remaining Asari boarders were by the surviving crew and passengers of the _Defiant_. The aliens had herded the surrendered sailors and soldiers into the medbay, with two of the aliens keeping watch over the prisoners.

Harper's status as the only Human to speak passable Citadel Standard meant that she was the one who was hauled out to retrieve the alien captured at the battle earlier from where she'd been locked up after the _Defiant_ was shot down. The Unity officer wasn't certain how to feel about being singled out that way.

On the plus side, it meant that she wasn't stuck twiddling her thumbs while two angry-looking aliens glared at her. On the other hand, it meant that she had to leave Williams behind, that she couldn't stay to protect him.

Not that she could have done much 'protecting' without her armor or weapons. Her body was built to be significantly stronger than that of an un-augmented Human, but that wasn't enough to overcome being outnumbered and out-gunned.

All that she _could_ do was try to calm down their alien captors as best as she could. Which wasn't all that helpful — dealing with people outside of the Unity had never been a strong suite of hers. Williams was the only baseline Human that she'd ever really gotten along with.

But she had to do something. While she hadn't understood the language that the armed Asari had used to talk to the one locked in the auxiliary server room, the personal concern in the purple-skinned humanoid's voice _had_ been noticed.

Harper nodded her head towards the locked door, careful to keep her movements slow and non-threatening. "Family of yours?"

The alien — Harper would have to get her name, and the sooner the better — glanced up from where she had been looking at the holographic interface projected above her left forearm. "Close enough." She responded tersely, returning to fiddling with whatever-it-was.

"Daughter? Sister?"

This time, the alien stared back at her for a few seconds before answering. "Close. Enough."

Well, so much for that.

As Harper was trying to think of what to say next, the alien closed the screen projected above her arm and spoke again, gesturing down the corridor towards the cargo bay. "Walk. The Matriarch wants you outside."

Gritting her teeth, Harper complied. After scrambling out of the rent torn straight _through_ the cargo hatch, she stood once more on the outside of the _Defiant_. Next to the broken hulk of the corvette, there were now two alien shuttles. The first was presumably the one that had transported the Asari down, while a second group of people were disembarking from the second.

These were clearly _not_ Asari. Even nearly a hundred meters away, Harper's augmented eyes could pick out the three fingers on each hand, as well as the strangely-elongated helmets. They looked similar enough to some of the aliens that they had fought earlier — 'Turians,' Liara had called them — but their armor was different, being heavier and lacking the rather garish gold-and-blue colors from earlier.

A different branch of their military, perhaps? She considered asking the alien who had led her here, but she certainly hadn't been particularly talkative thus far.

The group of new aliens walked over, scaling the sloped hull of the _Defiant_ up to the cargo bay hatch. One of them stepped ahead of the rest, stopping in front of the Asari. The rest hung back, holding their rifles at a low-ready while watching Harper from behind their opaque face-plates.

Their leader saluted the Asari, and spoke in a voice with a peculiar second tone underlying it. Thankfully, while he spoke swiftly it was still in Citadel Standard, so Harper could follow along. "Ma'am. My team will take over occupation of this vessel. Do your people require medical evacuation?"

The Asari shook her head. "All of us who are still alive are stabilized, and the medical team back aboard the diplomatic ship have more experience at treating Asari. Their shuttle should be along in less than an hour, but thank you for your offer."

"Very well." The new alien nodded. "If your people would evacuate this ship, then, my engineers will enter and take control."

A voice behind her caused Harper to turn and look over her shoulder. "I am afraid that won't be necessary."

Harper gritted her teeth. The same black-armored Asari who had used Williams as a Human shield earlier climbed out of the hole blasted through the hatch.

"I must insist, ma'am. The admiral has ordered that this ship be readied for transportation to the nearest Hierarchy shipyard for analysis."

"Your admiral's forethought is admirable, Lieutenant…"

"Arterius, ma'am."

There was a short pause. "Interesting. The fact of the matter is that this ship was surrendered to me, personally, thus making it salvage to be handled as I choose."

"But as the ship was downed during a military operation, the wreckage belongs to the first military authority on the scene, not an adventuring diplomat."

The Asari chuckled lowly, the first sign of emotion that Harper had seen from her yet. "And you'll find that I possess a reserve commission in the Armali Town Guard, a fully-credentialed and recognized military force within the Republics. Under my authority as a senior member of the Thessian Assembly, I re-activated that commission before setting foot on this ship. Therefore, as the first senior officer here, this ship is mine to claim."

The new alien stiffened, drawing itself (himself?) up straighter. Harper presumed that that body-language meant the same as it did in Humans, if only for the sake of avoiding wildly guessing. "The admiral _will_ contest that, ma'am. He is the senior-most officer on this operati—"

" _Hierarchy Admiral_ Arterius is not in my chain of command, lieutenant." The Asari glanced to her left, over the heads of the other new aliens that had arrived along with Lieutenant Arterius. Following her gaze, Harper saw three more shuttles landing near the two already set down. "Now, it would appear that the rest of my team has arrived. Lieutenant, if you and your people would be so kind as to remove yourselves from my ship…"

After a few seconds of silence, the Turian turned and marched back to the soldiers he had brought with him. As a group, they moved until they were just barely off of the _Defiant_ , and then stopped, turning to stare back at where Harper and the two Asari stood. Even through the Turians' opaque visors, she could _feel_ the glares.

Which brought the Unity officer back to wondering just why she had been brought out to hear the conversation. Did the aliens just not realize how much of their Standard language she had picked up? Harper had made sure to always talk slowly back to any of the aliens who had asked her questions, and only after pausing for a second or two. Had the deceit worked?

The new group of aliens who had disembarked from the three latest shuttles climbed up the sloping side of the _Defiant_. They — all Asari, Harper noted — also stopped in front of the black-armored Asari, and began talking. Unfortunately, they spoke in a language that was _not_ the Citadel Standard that Harper had learned. Matching phonemes with her mental record of her guard talking to Liara through the jammed hatch earlier, it seemed to be the same language.

Harper remained quiet, her implants recording all she heard. Trying to decipher this new language would give her something to focus on, as long as everybody seemed to have forgotten about her.

With interest, she noted that her guard had been sent back inside the _Defiant_ , followed by most of the new arrivals. The black-armored Asari started walking down the ship's hull, towards the shuttles. A moment later, the two remaining Asari turned to Harper. They drew their pistols and motioned for Harper to also walk down the side of the ship. "Follow her."

Harper balked. "And my crew?"

"They'll come later. Go." One grabbed Harper by her shoulder, pushing her after the black-clad Asari leader. Not a gentle push, either – for all that the Asari did not look much larger than the Human average, they seemed to be stronger. Then again, these ones seemed to be soldiers, so that could explain it.

Reluctantly, she started down the _Defiant_ 's hull. It wasn't like she had much choice in the matter.

* * *

Liara stood in the dark room, thinking. The wait until her release seemed to drag on forever, but at least it was tolerable now that she knew rescue was here. To pass the time, she thought on how she could tell Benezia about what had happened to her without her mother getting even _worse_ about trying to keep Liara away from 'dangerous' expeditions.

If the matriarch knew just _how_ close Liara had come to death both in the fight earlier and in the crash, there was no way that Liara would ever get to leave the family estates for a _century_ without one or more House commandos following her. _Maybe_ once Liara started organizing her own archaeological forays she could put up with having a few hard-faced soldiers following her out to the field, but certainly not before. Matriarch Sulita _still_ hadn't forgiven the young maiden for that one time when Reythe had 'secured' the expedition campsite by censoring all out-going communications.

A knock on the door caused Liara to startle. Again. Shaking her head in irritation at her own jumpiness, she called out "Shiala?"

"Here, Liara. I've got a breacher team with me, we're going to cut the hatch away from the frame. How much room is there between the hatch and the other side of the compartment you're in?"

"Around two meters, maybe a bit more."

"Should be enough. Stand on the other side and shield your eyes, okay? It's going to get very bright for a few seconds."

"Okay. Give me five seconds to get clear." Liara picked her way across the pitch-black room and huddled up against the other wall. As the loud _hiss_ of the cutting laser filled the small compartment, Liara held her eyes tightly shut, hands clamped over the sides of her head. She had watched enough action vids as a child to visualize the bright lance of light as the breaching laser cut away at the thick metal.

Several seconds later, and the hissing stopped. Liara opened one eye very slightly, seeing no light reflected on the wall in front of her. She looked over her shoulder in time to see the hatch levered open and pulled away from her. The compartment was flooded with light from the helmet lights of two commandos, who looked in before ducking back.

Liara felt her heartbeat accelerate once more. This was it — finally, she was among family once more. Carefully stepping out of the person-sized hole cut in the hatch, she looked around.

No Benezia. Her face fell, before she could stop the reaction.

A soft cough came from her right. Shiala. "Lady Benezia is outside the ship, getting everybody over to the shuttles and organized. I'm sure she can't wait to see you, of course."

"Of course." Liara parroted, unable to keep all of the disappointment out of her voice. As much as she was proud of her independence from Benezia, after all that the young maiden had been through she had been rather looking forwards to seeing her mother.

The soft touch of a hand on her shoulder, turning her, was all the warning Liara had before she was enveloped in a hug, Shiala's broad shoulders pressing the young archaeologist in close. "It's good to see you're okay, Liara. We're _all_ happy to have you back."

Shiala's heartfelt smile, seen through her clear visor, was mirrored on the faces of the other two Asari who held the heavy breaching drill. Liara felt a pang of embarrassment as she was unable to match the faces of the two commandos to names — had it been so long since she had lived at the T'Soni estate, that she couldn't even remember the names of two commandos? People whom she had grown up with, known for decades? She recognized their faces, but try as she might no names sprung to mind.

The spike of guilt punched its way through mental defenses weakened by the ordeal of the last few days. Liara fought for several seconds to keep her control, but in vain. A sob worked its way out through clenched teeth, followed by tears forcing their way out onto her face.

"Ah." Shiala only held her closer. "Neyana, Sersha, could you go help the others with getting the prisoners out of the medbay?" The polite words were underlined by the 'command tone' used by House T'Soni's head commando.

"Right away, ma'am."

After the two soldiers rumbled their way down the corridor with footsteps made heavy by carrying the breaching laser, Liara felt Shiala free one arm from the tight hug. Before the young maiden could look up, she heard the soft _hiss_ of a helmet being freed. A moment later, and Shiala lowered her head to rest against the top of Liara's crest where her head rested on the commando's chest. Shiala's hand returned, now alternating between gently patting and rubbing the maiden's back.

"You're okay, Liara. You're safe."

* * *

AN1: And that's it for this chapter. I wanted to show three things: 1) an Asari matriarch doing what canon says that matriarchs do (but never shows in-game): having connections so deep and inter-woven that they can pull off some stunts at the drop of a hat and get away with it, 2) Liara not being some battle-hardened soldier, but a young woman who just barely managed to hold herself together through some seriously traumatic experiences, and 3) Shiala getting some 'background' character development to show her as being a very kind-hearted person (especially for a soldier/bodyguard).

AN2: Next chapter will 'pull back' a bit to show the reactions from the 'authorities' of each side: on the one hand, the Alliance and Unity command get to react to having a First Contact War dropped in their laps, while a certain Turian Admiral gets orders to go 'find some colony of these aggressors and _convince_ them to sue for peace.'


	17. Plans & Orders

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 17

Started: 1 April 2017

Published:

* * *

Pre-notes: I'm going to start putting the definitions for non-English (whether real-life non-English words, or in-ME-'verse alien vocabulary) words here, before the story. I think that makes them more readable.

 _Kabalim_ : (Turian): The commanding officer of a cabal unit, generally ~10-15 biotics strong.

* * *

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

Fumbling around with her eyes closed, Admiral Kastanie Drescher brought her fist down on the snooze button of the alarm standing on the nightstand next to her bed, sending the plastic machine clattering to the floor. It was the day after St. Patrick's Day, after all. She could sleep in for a few more minutes, give the hangover a little longer to settle naturally. Being one of only two admirals in the Alliance Navy had to have _some_ perks, after all. The only people above her in the official chain of command, the ones who could censure her for slight lateness, were politicians.

And she would bet that most of _them_ would sleep in even later than she planned to.

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

Her eyes shot open, as her brain finally worked its way to a pair of startling realizations.

One: The beeping was _not_ from her alarm clock.

Two: The beeping _was_ coming from the smart-pad that sat next to where her alarm clock had been.

The _Navy_ smart-pad. The one whose alarm would only trigger when the Alliance needed the services of one of their senior-most naval officers _right now_.

Bolting upright, she grasped for the smart-pad. The bright screen burned her eyes, still tender from an evening of drinking followed by a night of deep sleep. Squinting, she dialed the screen brightness down with one hand, even as she extracted herself from the covers as swiftly as she could.

As she stood from the bed, her eyes finally adjusted enough to read the first few sentences of the message on the pad.

She wasn't certain if the sudden light-headedness was from standing too quickly, or from shock. The message informed her that the Second Fleet was being mobilized to a full war footing, and that the relevant orders had already been forwarded to her subordinates. She was to report to a closed session of the Alliance Parliament as soon as humanly possible.

After skipping a few beats, her heart returned to its duty, attempting to make up for the lost time by pumping as fast as it could.

 _War footing_. With the Second Fleet being comprised of some of the newest and largest warships in the Alliance Navy, those two words alone meant an _insane_ amount of credits funneled into getting the last few ships rushed out of the dockyards and into service. They meant tens of thousands of sailors, marines, and bomber crew yanked from their semi-reserve status, wherever they may be and whatever they may be doing at the time.

It meant war. This wasn't some hare-brained surprise exercise.

She reached across her bed, grabbing her husband by his shoulder and shaking him. "Karl, get up! Now!"

He rolled onto his back, sleep-glazed eyes blinking up at her blearily. "Whuh?" he croaked.

Her heart throbbed, even as her brain felt a pang of exasperation. The lovable oaf had slept right through her smart-pad's alarm. That thing was designed to wake the _dead_.

"I said get up! There's a goddamned _war_ on!"

She watched the sleep clear from his eyes in an instant. Civilian or not, _that_ was a sentence that would wake anyone up. And she needed him up and active.

There was only one known possible adversary for the Systems Alliance, but God only knew why the Unity was at war with them now. For goodness' sake, Second Fleet had been out on a joint exercise with the Unity's Home Armada just a few months ago, and she hadn't heard of any rising tensions between the two halves of Humanity, let alone anything that could spark a war.

But it didn't change the fact that Arcturus Station, the seat of the Alliance Parliament and the home-port of the Second Fleet, was a major target. Karl needed to be awake and ready to evacuate the half-completed station if necessary.

(BREAK)

Five minutes later, and a hastily-dressed Admiral Drescher exited her room in the officer's quarters lodged in a part of the expansive naval base within Arcturus station, just as one of the automated personnel shuttles pulled up outside. Climbing inside, she tapped at the pre-set destination on the car's control interface, and it rolled off towards the Parliament chambers.

Returning her attention to her smartpad, she absent-mindedly ran a brush through her hair. Arcturus had passed its pressure-tests only months before, so the station's atmosphere was in-place, so she had the luxury of wearing a Navy dress uniform instead of a vacuum suit. It was nice not to have to deal with the discomfort of a space-suit, but it did come with a higher standard of appearance. War or not, she wasn't going to go in front of Parliament looking like she actually _had_ just woken up minutes ago.

The brush halted as a new message appeared on her datapad. Frowning, she tried to process what it told her. They _weren't_ at war with the Unity? Who else was there? Her eyebrows rocketed upwards at the next paragraph in the message.

 _Aliens_!? Really?

After a few seconds, she returned to cleaning herself up for the Parliament meeting. At least this meant that Arcturus Station wasn't in imminent danger, if the only battle thus far had taken place so far from colonized space.

A short while later, after passing through the understandably-on-edge security around the Parliament building, she was finally ushered into the room where the Alliance's leaders met.

Only four Members of Parliament were present, both MPs from Earth and one each from Arcturus and Centauri.

The rest of the thirty-six seats in the chamber were empty, two for each world with a populace of Alliance citizenry. That was part of the craziness of the Alliance government that drove Navy planners mad from frustration: every little ball of mud with more than a few thousand hard-scrabble miners on it got their equal representation in Arcturus.

Who then proceeded to demand equal _protection_. The senior MPs from the established worlds — Earth, naturally, as well as Mars, Eden Prime, and Centauri from Sol's closest neighbor — had managed to keep the Alliance Navy from being split up entirely into penny-packets posted at each backwater, but it was a close thing.

What grabbed her attention at the moment, however, were the two people standing in the middle of the semi-circular chamber, who wore uniforms that did _not_ come from the Alliance.

As Drescher strode forwards, her aide whispered through the communications implant nestled inside her ear. "Fleet Admiral Sun Baozhai of the Unity's Strike Fleet, and Commodore Gunther Dawson of their Special Projects Division."

Drescher's left eyebrow rose slightly. She knew of Admiral Sun, as the commander of the Unity's equivalent of the Alliance's Second Fleet, but Commodore Dawson was new.

Admiral Sun glanced over from where she had been talking to two of the MPs, and nodded. As Drescher walked up next to her, the Unity officer spoke. "Admiral Drescher, good to see you ready."

Drescher nodded in response. "Likewise." She then turned to face the Alliance MPs in their seats in the front row of the chamber. "I was under the impression that I was called here to present before Parliament. Is this not the case?" If she hadn't thought she been needed here urgently, she might have had time to help Karl pack their belongings in readiness for what she had then thought to be a possible station evacuation.

MP Corwith responded. "Our apologies, Admiral Drescher, but we thought it prudent to invite Second Fleet's commander to the discussion about the future utilization of your warships."

Drescher blinked. "And we're discussing military plans in a non-secure building?"

Fleet Admiral Sun chuckled. "Admiral Drescher, we are at war with _aliens_. I doubt that any of our plans could be leaked from here to wherever-they're-from before the plans are put into action."

After a few heartbeats of silence, Drescher laughed softly. "Good point. My apologies for interrupting, then, and what was being discussed?"

Sun's voice soured. "We were discussing how to trick the citizens of the Alliance into acting in their own best interests."

MP Westington, the senior-most Member of Parliament and the foremost representative of Earth in the Alliance, coughed before responding, faint traces of laughter hidden underneath the coughing. "What Fleet Admiral Sun is saying is that while we _are_ at war, it may be difficult to convince the Alliance peoples of that fact."

"You can't be serious." Drescher intoned. "I've read the reports. We've lost three frigates and a corvette lost or captured, a heavy cruiser's been shot up, and the Unity's lost even more."

"And all of this took place in a very 'clean' space battle in an unclaimed system many weeks from any significant colony of the Alliance." MP Westington responded. "The only casualties thus far have been military."

Next to him, MP Corwith added "And Dr. Paylenko's team."

"Right. And two university scientists. Very tragic, but the public will not be willing to support a war — well, support the raised taxes and diverted industry — based on a purely military engagement."

Drescher closed her eyes for a second. "And when these aliens glass one of the outer colonies? Or barrel straight-in for Sol? For Earth?"

MP Westington smiled ruefully. " _Then_ they will blame you and I for not having a fleet large enough to stop them."

"But I think we have a better option." Fleet Admiral Sun re-entered the conversation. "As MP Westington has pointed out, your civilians are unlikely to feel threatened by what has thus-far been almost entirely a _military_ struggle. We must present them with Human _civilian_ casualties in order to gain enough support for necessary defensive measures."

Drescher frowned. "We're _not_ going to sit on our thumbs until a colony gets bombed."

"And that is not what I am suggesting." Fleet Admiral Sun responded calmly. "There is a Unity naval base somewhat near the battle site, less than a week's travel away. It is staffed by a construction division, fifty-thousand drones led by a thousand officers. They have presently been re-tasked from constructing a naval base into preparing the planet for 'colonization.' Hab-blocks, factories, hospitals, schools, everything recognizable to any civilian across the Alliance."

Admiral Drescher was silent for several seconds, thinking. "And then you lure the enemy into attacking this Potemkin colony, recording the footage to show to the Alliance public?"

"Precisely."

"And the Second Fleet factors into this…how?"

MP Westington responded "Given the… _mistrust_ …held by many citizens of the Alliance towards the Unity half of Mankind, it is uncertain whether the public will _stay_ willing to support a war even with a _Unity_ colony attacked. However, if a newly-minted _Alliance_ fleet charges in as the Big Damn Heroes to liberate the colony, then the common 'man in the street' will have something to rally behind."

"But it will take weeks, at the very least, to ready the Second Fleet for combat."

"And the shipyards over Mars and Centauri will be _swarming_ with reporters documenting the heroic efforts of our brave men and women in uniform to prepare themselves for battle."

"Hmm. You're the politician." Drescher nodded. "It still does leave my people as the ones charging into battle against an enemy whom we know almost nothing about. We have no information on their naval numbers, colony locations, political stances, anything."

"And that's where I come in." The other Unity officer spoke up. "Commodore Dawson, Special Projects Division. As it happens, the 'colony' we're discussing here was built for the project under my command."

"Which is?"

"Project 7. Long-range stealth attack boats. Forty-seven of them are currently ready or near completion at the base. They're invisible to radar, have a negligible gravity signature, and can contain their own thermal emissions for hours at a time. Perfect scouts."

"And you have forty-seven of these wonder-weapons standing ready out in the middle of nowhere?"

"Well…the original Project goal was to produce commerce raiders for potential use against Alliance shipping in the case of a war. The base location was selected for being along the predicted path of Alliance colonization and expansion." The commodore coughed. "But that's in the past. As it is, those craft can hide out in the outer system, waiting for the enemy's attack. If we're lucky, the aliens will invade the 'colony' as opposed to bombing it to dust from orbit. Landing troops means _supplying_ troops. And supplying troops means sending slow-moving supply ships back and forth between our base and wherever these aliens are from. It appears from what we've seen so far that the enemy primarily makes use of the Artifact network to travel. If so, we should be able to follow their returning supply ships back, and get at least some sense of how large our enemy is and where _their_ colonies are located."

To Drescher's surprise, it was MP Corwith who promptly asked the obvious follow-up question. "If you have forty-seven warships ready at the colony, why not ambush the enemy fleet as they arrive?"

"The R-class craft are _raiders_ , ma'am, not proper warships. They can hide, they can seek, but they can't _fight_ anything that will shoot back. But when your Second Fleet" the commodore nodded towards Admiral Drescher "attacks, then my raiders _can_ devastate any enemy shipping that they've run into, and possibly group-up to harass any enemy warships that escape the battle."

Another thought occurred to Drescher. "Which brings me to my next question: If you're throwing these experimental weapons into the fight, will real Unity warships be supporting my Fleet in the 'liberation'?"

Admiral Sun glanced over at MP Westington before responding. "Yes and no. The main value of the counter-attack, as described by MP Westington, is that the Alliance sees _their_ ships leading the liberation, not the Unity navy. That being said, I will lead my Strike Fleet in support of your warships, but we will wait outside of the system. If you feel that the enemy is present in enough strength to cause you difficulty, we will be ready to aid in the attack after all."

* * *

"Sir! Cabal-lieutenant Arterius, reporting as ordered!"

Admiral Desolas Arterius looked up from his desk display, at the younger Turian standing just inside of his office. With a wave of his hand, he closed the hatch behind the younger officer. For a second or two, he watched his younger brother standing rigidly at attention, every limb held in perfect stillness. Every inch the ideal Hierarchy soldier, save for the cabal insignia appended to Saren's rank tabs.

But Desolas knew his brother. He could see past the training, past the discipline, into the anger beneath. The mandibles held closer to the jaw, the slight tremble of Saren's fist, the glint in the younger Arterius's eyes.

Desolas let out a slow breath. "No, Saren, I asked for _you_." He waved to the two filled cups resting on a tray in the middle of his desk. "Sit."

Saren silently took a seat, glaring down at the refreshments in front of him as if they were about to pounce on him. Just as Desolas was about to order him to drink, too, the cabalist finally grasped the closer cup and took a sip.

And then started in surprise, glancing back up at Desolas. "This is _not_ tea."

The admiral reclined back in his chair. "No, it is not."

"Regulations do not approve of drinking on duty."

"And the directives of the individual's commanding officer override those regulations." Desolas leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the metal desk. "When such treatment is deemed necessary _by_ that officer."

Saren straightened. "I have no need of treatment of any sort."

"Hah." Desolas snorted. "Your kabalim noted that your biotics were flaring when your shuttle got back."

A low growl leaked out of the young biotic. "Kabalim Kandros is —"

"Doing her duty in monitoring the mental state one of her chief subordinates." Desolas glanced down at Saren's fist where it rested on the table, thin whisps of biotic energy playing over the lieutenant's hand plates.

Following his older brother's gaze, Saren flexed the fingers of that hand. After a few seconds of visible concentration, the glowing biotics subsided.

Taking a sip of his own drink, Desolas continued. "Actually, if Kabalim Kandros had followed _the letter_ of the relevant regulations, she would have had you rotated off of the line and into training for a week, at the least. Instead, she came to me."

"I see."

Desolas waited. He knew that Saren would talk about his frustration, eventually. As the older brother of the two, it had been Desolas's life-long responsibility to guide his younger sibling, much like any proper Turian officer's duty towards their subordinates.

After the better part of a minute of silence, Saren sighed and lowered his head. "My apologies, Adm— _Desolas_. After the failure of my team's mission, I found it difficult to control my anger on the shuttle-ride back here."

Desolas nodded. Exactly what he had expected. "You did not fail, Saren."

"What? We did not gain control of the ship. The Spirits-damned _Asari_ claimed it for herself."

"And were your helmet cameras recording?"

There came a pause. Desolas smiled — whenever Saren managed to place his brain in command of his emotions as opposed to the other way around, the younger Arterius showed that he had inherited the same quick mind that had seen Desolas promoted to command of a Heavy Patrol Fleet. "Yes…"

"Then you succeeded in your _other_ mission." The Admiral waved off-handedly towards the computer display on his desk. "I've looked it up — Matriarch Benezia was telling the truth. Her claim of that ship was fully legal, and we have no ability to over-ride her."

Saren nodded. "That _one_ , _small_ ship."

"Precisely. If she wants to recite regulations at us, then we will _follow_ those regulations. To. The. Letter. 'Every piece of salvage from a battle is the responsibility of the first command-grade officer on-site.'"

The younger brother leaned back, drawing another sip from his cup. "I take it that that was the reason why the shuttle bay was so empty when I arrived back onboard?"

"Indeed." Desolas chuckled. "The Expeditionary fleet that we arrived in time to rescue was too busy effecting their own repairs and rescuing their own lifepods to dispatch their shuttles to the disabled 'Human' ships. Three cruisers and a dreadnought, all perfectly legitimate Hierarchy salvage. The Asari can _keep_ their corvette."

Saren gazed into his cup for a few seconds before responding, "If that's what you had planned, then why was _I_ sent with the team that was not expected to succeed?"

"Politics, brother." Desolas waited for Saren to finally look up. "I wanted you to learn from this encounter."

"Learn, what? To lose?"

"No." Desolas chuckled. "Unless the instructors from Basic Training have changed a great deal from when I went through Training all those years ago, they taught you _that_ much there already. No, think on this instead: your enemies may think themselves the victors. They may parade this 'fact' in your face, they may laugh at you. But it is only in the final act that one can truly determine _who_ has won or lost. Until then, do not waste your time either gloating or sulking. Not all enemies can so easily fall prey to their own sense of self-importance as an Asari Matriarch."

Saren snorted. "I would not say that the Asari are our 'enemies,' only our 'opponents' at times."

"Ha!" Desolas leaned back in his chair. "True enough, yes, no Hierarchy warship and no Hierarchy soldier has ever exchanged fire with their counterpart from the Republics, but do not be mistaken. The Turian people are the 'odd one out' on the Council. The warships who patrol the ragged edges of civilization, who keep watch for the next Rachni, who skirmish with Hegemony raiders and pirates alike over the burned-out husks of independent colonies, _those_ warships are Turian, almost every one. The impeccably-maintained, beautifully-painted 'warships' whose guns have never fired a shot in anger, who sit the Citadel, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, and all the other 'critical' locations that have never known _true_ warfare? _Those_ ships are Salarian and Asari." He smacked one palm against the table for emphasis. "It is _Turian_ steel, _Turian_ force-of-arms that has carried the light of civilization out to the furthest explored reaches of the Relay network. Of the three Council governments, only the Hierarchy has fully dedicated their genuine efforts to the defense of _all_ of Citadel space. The Union and the Republics? They sit on their own turf, and cry to us when anything goes wrong. Before us, it was the Krogan. When they proved themselves not to be up to the task of protecting the galaxy, we took their place." He snorted. "At least the Asari and Salarians learned from their mistake with the Krogan — they paid us off from conquering them ourselves by bribing us with a Council seat, far more than the Krogan were ever offered."

Saren frowned. "But there were Asari warships in the Expeditionary fleet that we rescued. They fought as hard as the Hierarchy ships in that group."

"And more credit to them. Those sailors did their people proud. But they weren't _expected_ to be in combat at all when they were ordered out here. They expected to over-awe some primitive species just discovered out here on the edges of known space, to take part in a peaceful First Contact. They did not expect a fight, and they paid for it. For Spirits' sake, they brought the _troop transports_ into the system with them! Thousands of lives, thrown away pointlessly." He jabbed a claw at Saren. "And most of _those_ lives were Hierarchy soldiers."

Desolas straightened up and added "Which brings me to my next point. I've received new orders from Hierarchy Command, orders that originated with the Council. We are to proceed through the Relay in this system, following the unexplored link. We've been ordered to find wherever these 'Humans' are coming from and force them to the negotiations table. _Us_ , alone — the Expeditionary fleet ships and the surviving C-FLEET cruiser will stay here, to 'guard our supply lines.'" He let out a slow hiss. "Make no mistake, _we're_ the ones being given all of the risk here." Reading from the active display on his desk, he continued "My _orders_ are to use 'all available force' to compel a 'rapid and victorious' end to this war, but you can bet your last credit that as soon as the treaty is signed, every last Asari 'journalist' in Citadel space will be running stories on the 'casual brutality' of Hierarchy military tactics."

"Then why follow through with that? Why not simply pass through the Relay, and stop any Human warships from passing through? That would fit within the letter of your orders."

"Then the stories would be about a dangerously-ambitious Turian Admiral 'interpreting his orders to suit his own desires,' and how my 'lack of resolve put the entirety of Citadel space at risk.'" Desolas shook his head. "Worst part is, they'd be right."

"Right?"

"No war — no _real_ war — has ever been won by battles alone. The ability of the society to _support_ a war must be destroyed first. Against Turians, this means destroying factories, industrial infrastructure, military bases, and the like. For most of the rest of the galaxy, it means convincing the civilian population to pressure their own leaders to cease the fighting. For us, here, it means that if we keep this a war between Citadel soldiers and sailors versus Human soldiers and sailors, it will drag on until one side or the other's colonies are attacked." Desolas leaned forwards, resting his palms flat against the desk. "And if _someone_ 's home must burn to end a war, I'll make _damned_ sure it isn't on 'our' side of that Spirits-cursed Relay."

* * *

AN1: Even though canon ME has the Systems Alliance led by the 'Parliament,' as an American I cannot help but picture any such gatherings as looking like the US Senate or House. So that's the 'seating arrangement' that I picture, instead of, say, the UK Parliament where benches for the MPs are set facing each other in parallel rows.

AN2: One of my main reasons for going through the First Contact War in this story (which is rather more complicated than it is shown either in canon or in most fanfictions, which tend not to go beyond 'Turians jump in and sit on a Human colony, maybe shoot a bunch of civilians, and then the Navy swoops in and kicks them out of the system') is to try to establish some 'precedents' for events later in the story.  
For example, does 'sacrificing a colony to get information/support against an alien enemy' sound familiar to anyone? Admittedly, Harper isn't TIM (yet) and isn't at all involved in the plan, but still.

AN3: For anyone curious, 'Project 7' is named after Convoy SC 7, a British merchant convoy during WW2 that was attacked during mid-October, 1940 with the loss of 20 of the 35 merchant vessels, almost 80,000 tons of shipping. None of the attacking U-boats were destroyed. Since the Unity (and later, Alliance) stealth raiding ships are pretty much U-boats IN SPACE, it seemed appropriate to name the project (in-universe, too) after what is considered to be one of the most iconic and successful U-boat attacks in history.

AN4: Another thing I'm trying to do in this chapter is establish just _why_ the Alliance and Unity have all these warships and weapons lying around, ready for war. One of the things that always bugged me in Mass Effect canon was that the Alliance, before ever meeting so much as a single live alien civilization, had multiple _freaking DREADNOUGHTS_ in their navy.

You know, the massive, top-flight warships so ruinously expensive to build that only a few Citadel governments have _any_. The purpose-built mobile cannons that are _only_ good for fighting set-piece, major naval battles. Dreadnoughts are useless for hunting down pirates (too slow) or even escorting one's own merchant shipping (too expensive, and vulnerable without a swarm of escort ships). And in ME canon, the Alliance had multiple dreadnoughts as of the First Contact War (in 2157 in canon), while Humanity had only discovered eezo in 2149, less than a decade previously.

That's as insane and unbelievable as if the US Navy had built _multiple_ fleet carriers by the year ~1910, less than a decade after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk.

So the Alliance built several of these monsters because, what? They found the Prothean ruins and all of Humanity went "Eek! Ancient, probably now-dead aliens! Quick, spend like half of our entire GDP on building giant warships!" Boy, I would love to see how they got _that_ funded by Parliament.

Point being, one of the reasons why I have there be _two_ Human governments (Unity and Alliance) who don't really get along all that well is so that there's a _reason_ why both sides have spent a lot of resources on their respective militaries.

Also, while the Mass Effect (and eezo in general) hasn't really been explored yet by Humanity, the concept of interstellar space-flight in this story is over half a century old. While I still think it's somewhat straining credulity to say that a Humanity with barely 50 years of interstellar history could actually make warships that stand up to Hierarchy warships (keep in mind that the Hierarchy, in canon, was a star-faring empire since before 500 BC. There were Turians piloting and designing star-going warships for _hundreds of years_ before Alexander the Great, for example, was even _born_. Heck, if one assumes that the Turians had been space-faring for a good while before that, it's possible that the Turian equivalent of Yuri Gagarin made it to near-Palaven space even before the _Trojan War_ , for God's sake.), I think this at least makes _some_ sense as opposed to the canon wunderkind that is the Systems Alliance.

AN5: Another theme I'm playing with in this story is the idea of _family_. There's a lot of it in canon ME – think about how many characters have their families play important roles: 5 of Shepard's companions have their loyalty/side missions involve family members (Tali's dad, Miranda's sister/dad, Samara's daughter, arguably Kasumi's husband, Thane's son), Liara's mother is one of the chief antagonists of ME1, etc. I'm extending that theme, by playing up the Arterius brothers as being closer than they were depicted in canon, and by a few other plot points that won't come up for quite a while.

Also, I just wanted to give Saren some more character development, before he gets thrown head-first into the events of ME1. It always bugged me just how un-developed he was as a character in ME1 – the player never saw much of his backstory, or anything to make him more than a cardboard cut-out of a TV villain, until the final ~2 conversations (at Virmire, and later in the Citadel Council chambers) when you can finally see some of his character peeking through the indoctrination.

AN6: It just occurred to me that with the apparently-immobile plates that Turians have instead of lips, they might not actually be capable of 'sipping' from a cup. Eh, I'll skip over that.

AN7: I'm also trying to portray Desolas not as the ranting & raving asshole he was in canon (admittedly, he was indoctrinated for all of his appearance there, while he's his own man here), but to show his path of reasoning for his actions that will come up later.


	18. Talks

Unity of Mankind

Chapter 18

Started: 11 April 2017

Published: 13 April 2017

* * *

Pre-note 1: Keep in mind that I'm using the convention of all measurements (time, distance, mass, etc.) being shown in Human measurements, regardless of who's actually talking. So even though, for example, a Thessian 'year' is different from an Earth 'year' (according to the ME codex, Thessia's orbital period is 0.9 years, so presumably their 'year' is ~328 – 329 days instead of 365), when any Asari character quotes a number of 'years' in my story, the actual number presented is measured in Earth years. Presumably she's actually saying a different number than I'm writing down in the text, but that would just get confusing.

* * *

The squadron lay still, the rounded wedge-shaped hulls of Alliance and Unity warships floating serenely next to the squared-off bulks of the troop transports. The faint sunlight from the far-off sun of the system was all that illuminated the ships, playing over the smooth white paint of the Alliance vessels as well as the light-blue of their Unity counterparts. With all systems save for life support and passive sensors held at a cold standby, the ships should be all-but-impossible to detect.

Or at least, that was what Captain Shepard devoutly hoped as she stared at the tactical repeater in her quarters. She didn't know what sensors the alien ships used, but they didn't _seem_ to have been able to follow her squadron's retreat from the planet. As it was, most of the alien vessels still held their orbit above the ruin-covered planet, with only their smallest warships patrolling an area several light-minutes in radius around the larger combatants.

It seemed that the enemy were _not_ eager to let Shepard's bombers get another run in. Not that she was planning on another such attack — with all of the shuttles running back and forth between the alien ships, she had no way of knowing which of the enemy vessels held the prisoners hopefully recovered from the crashed _Defiant_. Of course, it was possible that there _were_ no prisoners — either they had perished in the crash, or had not been allowed to surrender — but Shepard would hold out hope until proven otherwise. It was why her ships had stayed in-system for the five days since the fight, instead of withdrawing through the Artifact. Shepard wasn't leaving until she had some idea of where the enemy may be taking the captured Humans.

In the meantime, her strike craft were useful in other ways. The wing's scout craft stayed as close to the enemy ships as was safe, sending the sensor readings back to Shepard's squadron with tight-beam laser bursts. The light-speed data transmission meant that the tactical readout in Shepard's quarters was nearly a full twenty-four hours out-of-date, but it was worth it to maintain the squadron's concealment. Besides, as soon as the alien vessels made any move to leave their orbit, the scouts were to break stealth in order to send the up-to-date information via FTL grav-pulse before jumping away to safety.

In the meantime, the rest of the squadron got time to rest their crews and repair what damage the ships had taken. For the most part, this meant re-applying the smart-paint to the long gashes that marked the hulls of almost all of the Human vessels. Besides the lost _Antietam_ , _Bull Run_ , _Fredericksburg_ , and _Shanxi_ , the rest of the warships had not sustained any penetrating hits, their armor doing its job admirably when the ships could angle properly towards their enemy so as to not present the flat face of their hull as a target.

As it was, Shepard wasn't even that certain just how necessary re-applying the smart-paint was. Yes, the absorbent material was key to keeping the ships' sensor profiles to a minimum, but even with the damaged areas showing up plainly on the sensors of the other vessels, the Human warships were still easily an order of magnitude harder to detect than the alien vessels were. The enemy ships practically _glowed_ with infrared emissions, and their hulls seemed to do nothing at all to absorb even the low-power radar pulses from the Human scout craft.

Hell, the scouts could watch the alien crew through the windows on the enemy ships. _Windows!_ On a _warship!_ Shepard wasn't certain whether to laugh at or admire those alien sailors who were apparently so indifferent to danger as to go into combat with such a ludicrous design.

Could the aliens be using some other sort of sensor, besides thermal, radar or LADAR?

"Ma'am, Artifact's lighting up!" Her XO's warning jolted Shepard from her thoughts.

"Acknowledged. I'm headed up." She grabbed her helmet off of her desk before kicking off for the door. If the Artifact was activating, that meant one of two things: either she was about to receive some unexpected reinforcements, or the enemy were about to do the same.

In the null-gravity conditions of the _Warsaw_ at rest, Shepard found it difficult to _stride_ onto the bridge as she'd prefer. Instead, she had to make up for it with tone of voice as she floated in through the open hatch. "Any update, Andrew?"

Commander Harris glanced over his shoulder from where he sat in the Captain's chair, before shaking his head. As he removed the restraints holding him in place, he responded "No, ma'am. Our grav sensors picked up the Artifact spiking just a minute ago; matched the pattern for a transit emergence. But we didn't pick up any ship coming through. Artifact's gone silent again, still no ship trace."

As her XO vacated her seat, Shepard flipped over the back of her chair, landing in place and buckling herself in. "Any reaction from the enemy?" Her squadron was lying doggo much closer to the Artifact than the alien ships were. The gravity-wave spike from the Artifact should have reached the enemy just seconds before she entered the bridge, by her mental calculations.

"No grav readings from them yet, ma'am. We should be seeing any response from them shortly." As if to punctuate his words, the tactical display in the center of the bridge briefly flashed, indicating that it had shifted to a new data input stream.

Shepard glanced at the readout and frowned. "Scouts grav-pulsed us the data." She gestured to the now-shifting enemy warships in the display. The small enemy pickets were moving back in closer to their capital ships, whose own grav-distortion readings were climbing back towards the levels that they'd displayed in combat several days ago. "Looks like the aliens weren't expecting the Artifact activation, either."

"Strange. Not one of theirs, then?"

"Possibly. Then whose?"

A sudden chirp heralded the sudden appearance of another ship-readout. But it was not near the enemy ships.

Instead, the yellow-coded unknown popped into being barely a dozen kilometers off the port beam of the _Warsaw_. In the middle of a Navy squadron on alert.

Un-detected.

No sooner had the action-stations alarm automatically begun to sound than the new contact's representation on the tactical display shifted from unknown-yellow to friendly-green.

Shepard blinked in surprise. Who in the—

A different chirp sounded, from her communications console. Reflexively, she tapped the key to answer the incoming message.

And unknown woman's face looked back at her from the small display projected in front of her command chair. An unknown face, attached to a body wearing a Unity Navy Commander's uniform.

"Captain Shepard, my apologies for dropping in unannounced." The woman nodded sharply. "Commander Cheng, Unity Navy. I've brought a message for you from Alliance Command. Transmitting now."

Shepard nodded slowly in response, even as her console beeped in to acknowledge the receipt of the message. "Can't say we were expecting you, commander."

Cheng's lips parted in a slight grin. "I should hope not. If you didn't see us coming, then hopefully these aliens won't either."

"Interesting." Shepard glanced at the tactical readout before responding. "Can I hope that you're here to help in the counter-attack?"

The Commander's grin disappeared. "I'm afraid not. My ship's a raider, not a set-piece warship." She coughed, awkwardly. "I believe that the message should contain your new orders."

Shepard held the Unity officer's gaze for a second before glancing down to read the message. They weren't here to help rescue the _Defiant_ 's crew? As soon as the message was decrypted, she started reading. As she scanned through the text, her eyes gradually narrowed into irritated slits. After nearly a minute of reading, she was done.

Glancing back up, she glared at Commander Cheng. "My squadron is to retreat back through the Artifact, and abandon the _Defiant_ 's people?"

At least Cheng had the decency to look embarrassed. "I didn't cut the orders, ma'am. I just carried them to you."

Shepard took a deep breath, looking away and fixing her gaze back on the tactical readout. The enemy warships looked to be at full readiness now, their pickets spread out enough to foil a bomber run but still close in enough to be an effective combat formation.

And they still outnumbered Shepard's squadron several times over.

Turning back to Cheng, the captain let out her breath slowly. "Well, you've stirred up the enemy enough that I definitely can't get in a surprise attack now. And I can't make a run for the Artifact just yet, either — jumping to FTL would leave a grav wake big enough that the enemy could intercept us at the Artifact easily." Frankly, she wasn't sure why the enemy were patrolling near the planet, instead of camping on top of the Artifact and trapping Shepard's squadron in-system. "As soon as they calm down, my squadron will withdraw. Will your ship accompany us?"

"No." The commander shook her head. "We'll remain in-system here, ready to ambush any targets of opportunity that present themselves."

"I see." Shepard tapped a few commands into the command chair's controls. "I've forwarded you the recorded sensor data we've got on the enemy since the _Defiant_ was downed. Note that we have yet to identify which enemy ships have our POWs aboard."

"Received. We'll take that into account."

* * *

Liara leaned back on her bunk, staring at the ceiling above her. A computer sat on the desk which took up much of the remaining space in the small stateroom, but she'd long since run out of interest with it. The Hierarchy fleet that had arrived in the system earlier had not left a communications-relay buoy behind at the Relay, and according to Benezia the Turian Admiral in charge had refused to split off any of his ships to do so since. And without the buoy, the computer in Liara's compartment had no extranet access.

She frowned. Then again, seeing as how the ship she was on was technically still in an active warzone, it was likely that any communications would have been restricted, anyways. At least, that matched what she'd always seen of wars in movies and stories.

Rolling onto her side, the young maiden let out a sigh. So far, her experience of the 'war' had been five minutes of mind-numbing terror, followed by several hours of sitting idle in a corner of a Human ship's cargo bay, and then nearly four days of equally mind-numbing boredom onboard the diplomatic-service frigate that she now found herself aboard.

Benezia had been too busy talking with the leaders of the two Citadel military formations and talking to the Human prisoners. Shiala — usually the one person in the T'Soni extended 'family' who had always been happy to talk to Liara when she had been younger — and the rest of the commandos were too busy guarding those same prisoners, especially when they were short two commandos from the fighting.

And Liara wasn't allowed to get involved in any of it. She knew well enough to stay away from her mother's negotiations with the other leaders — Liara had learned at a young age that diplomacy was _not_ a topic that she had any interest or particular skill in — and the commandos wouldn't let her talk to the prisoners. She wasn't sure if she _wanted_ to talk to them so soon after the firefight that she had been caught in earlier, but at least it would be _something_ to do.

As it was, she'd simply retreated to her room, and had almost finished reading through all of the books she had stored on her omni-tool. Goddess willing, _something_ interesting would happen before she finished her last book.

Just as she reached over to re-activate her 'tool for another chapter, a soft knock at her cabin door interrupted her. Frowning, she glanced over to her right. Who could that be? "Hello?"

"May I come in?"

Liara started in surprise. "Of course, mother."

The door hissed open, and Benezia stepped through. Not Lady Benezia, Matriarch T'Soni, but simply Benezia, Liara's mother. The young maiden relaxed at seeing that her mother had shed her old commando armor in favor of a flowing yellow dress.

Benezia closed the door behind her, and took a seat on the corner of the desk across from the bed. For several long seconds, she silently looked back at Liara. For her part, Liara was struggling to find a way to start the conversation that Benezia presumably intended to have. The last time the two of them had had a 'heart-to-heart' had been in Liara's bedroom in the family manor on Thessia, many years ago on the night before she left for University.

It…hadn't gone well. Liara had been able to practically _feel_ the disappointment radiating from her mother when she had discovered that the young maiden had already laid out her course schedule. Prothean history, archaeology, several of the sciences, but none of the psychology, xeno-history, or political-science courses that Benezia had all-too-obviously held out hope for.

Just as the silence was becoming awkward, Benezia spoke softly. "How are you, Liara?"

The young maiden considered her options. She could lie, but Benezia had literally _centuries_ of experience at reading other people on top of _being her mother_. Truth it was, then. "Bored." Before her mind could clamp down on her mouth, another word slipped through. "Lonely."

Benezia swallowed, glancing away. "I am sorry to hear that." Sighing, she turned back. "I acknowledge my own fault in your predicament, as well. It has been a…difficult…few days."

"I understand."

Her mother cracked a warm smile in response. "I know you do." Her smile dropped suddenly. "Has not Shiala been talking with you since…" she waved one hand expressively, trailing off.

Liara shook her head. "She's been too busy pulling guard duty over the prisoners, since Ephea's still recovering from her wounds and Meveera's gone." Thankfully, Meveera had been one of the House commandos that Liara had never really interacted with as a child. As awful as it sounds, after all of the shocks Liara had gone through the past few days, Meveera's death just hadn't really rattled the young maiden as much as she felt it should have. "I tried talking to Ephea down in the medical bay, but she's still to far-out on painkillers for real conversation."

"So I've heard." Benezia grimaced. "She was hit with an eezo-laced explosive at point-blank range. Frankly, it's a miracle that she survived at all."

Liara nodded silently, feeling the gloom of the week's experiences settling down to smother the conversation. One glance at Benezia's solemn features was enough to remind the maiden that her mother had likely had enough stress from her own work already. Casting her mind around for something happier to comment on, a particular memory from after the fight earlier drifted to the top of her thoughts. "I think one of the Humans might be a medical doctor or medic. Maybe she can help?"

"Oh?"

"Yes, the one who wore the large armor. After the…" Liara swallowed before continuing "after the fight at the first meeting in the Prothean hangar, she went to one of their people, who had been shot several times in the chest." She waved one hand over her abdomen. "It was…messy."

"I am sorry you had to see that."

"It wasn't the worst thing I'd seen by then." Liara shook her head, seeing Benezia wince out of the corner of her eye. "As I was saying, the armored Human — Harper, she said her name was — spread some chemical from a pouch worn around her waist on his wounds. Less than a minute later, and the bleeding stopped. He sat up and was talking barely five minutes more after that."

"Interesting. But why do you think she would help us? She's an enemy soldier, after all."

"Well, she was the first of the Humans to ask if I was okay after the fight, and she checked over _all_ of the wounded, not just the Humans. And when the ship we were on crashed, she covered me from the debris bouncing around in the cargo bay."

"Really?" Benezia's eyebrows shot upwards, the black-paint marks above her eyes arching in surprise. Reythe had the same sort of paint applied above her eyes, and had once told a younger Liara that it was done to mimic the patches of hair that Quarians grew above their eyes. "It sounds like I may owe this 'Harper' my thanks." She paused for a second. "In fact, would you like to ask her if she would be willing to look at Ephea's wounds?"

Liara thought for several seconds before answering. Did she want to talk to the Humans again? She still had difficulty sleeping well, memories of the frantic fire-fight in the hangar earlier waking her up throughout the night. She glanced over at her de-activated omni-tool. Then again, it was _something_ interesting to do. And as Benezia had pointed out, Liara should take the opportunity to thank Harper for protecting Liara during the crash earlier. Nodding, she turned back to face Benezia. "Yes, I think I would."

* * *

'Captain' Jackie Harper sat in her cell, contemplating the intricate paint adorning the walls and ceiling. Flowing lines of calming colors mixed in a pattern that evoked the gentle roll of ocean waves, circling around the small room.

All things considered, she doubted that her cell was intended for holding prisoners. It felt more like some passenger liner's stateroom than anything else. And not an 'economy-class' room, either, what with the indirect lighting coming from recessed strips along the upper corners of the walls.

The locked door, and the guard that she knew was standing outside of it, were nevertheless quite up to the task of keeping her contained in the room. Without her armor, she had no hope of forcing the door open, and the electronic lock which glared red at her from the middle of the door was clearly password-encoded. She couldn't even find any proper controls for the lock on this side, but it was possible that those had been removed before she had been ordered into the room.

As it was, her internal chronometer was just passing ninety-seven hours from the surrender aboard the _Defiant_ , and nothing interesting had yet happened. Just sitting in her room for most of the day, interspersed with regular food deliveries to her room. She would have called it 'room service' if the meals hadn't considered of Alliance MREs. Then again, for all she knew the aliens considered arsenic to be a common spice for _their_ own food, so perhaps the MREs were tolerable in the end.

Harper often heard people walking past outside, and could even hear their conversations through the door. They weren't speaking Citadel Standard, so she couldn't understand them, unfortunately. And none of the guards — three of them that Harper had learned to tell apart by the sound of their voices — had talked back to her when the Unity officer had tried to start up a conversation in her Citadel Standard. She knew they could hear her, almost as well as her enhanced hearing could hear them through the door, but they didn't respond. It wasn't that they were nervous or shy, just well-disciplined.

Harper chuckled. They certainly weren't _shy_ — the same guard followed her on her scheduled visits to the bathroom down the hall, and stood silently watching her the entire time, as if she would violently escape even while her under-suit pants were bunched up around her ankles. At least the bathroom facilities were familiar enough to use, although she noted that the toilet seat seemed to be of a single immobile piece with the rest of the assembly. That probably amused the male Alliance POWs, assuming that they were still being held on the same ship. At least it solved the age-old debate on what position to leave the toilet seat in. Maybe the Asari had grown tired of that old argument, and put an end to it.

She frowned. Come to think of it, she hadn't yet seen any _male_ Asari, and they were the only species of alien she'd seen aboard the ship since she had been marched aboard from the _Defiant_ 's wreck. Talking with Liara all those days ago had informed her that the 'Turians' and 'Batarians' whose bodies had been recovered were, in fact, different species entirely.

A loud knock on the door to her cell drew Harper from her thoughts. A sharp laugh worked its way out of her throat. What, were they asking her permission to come in? With laughter in her voice, she called in Citadel Standard "Sorry, I'm too busy to take visitors right now. Please schedule an appointment with my secretary, standing by the door."

After a heartbeat of silence, she faintly heard a short conversation in the vowel-heavy flowing language that the Asari seemed to speak among themselves. A second later, and the red light on the door flashed to green as it split open.

The Asari from the first fight — Liara — stood framed in the doorway, the guard glaring in at Harper from over the other Asari's shoulder.

"Ah, Liara. Glad to see you again. Come right in!"

"Uh…thank you?" The Asari stepped inside, the guard following her and standing to the side of the doorway as the door itself hissed shut once more.

"I'm afraid I wasn't expecting visitors, sorry." Harper waved to the half-eaten MRE packet lying on the empty desk opposite of her bed, and the canteen with it. "I can offer you a choice of water or no-water."

Liara just stared back, mouth slightly open.

A laugh that Harper couldn't hold back erupted out, her head cocked back as she collapsed onto the bed. After several seconds, she managed to wrest enough control over herself to sit back up.

Liara still stood just inside of the doorway, head cocked slightly to one side. The guard behind her was doing her level best to glare a hole straight through Harper's skull. Harper's eyes followed the guard's left arm to where her coiled fist was wreathed in a familiar blue glow.

Suddenly mindful of that she was entirely unarmed and un-armored, Harper quickly got her laughter under control. "Sorry, I haven't had much anything to do for the last few days, and messing with you seemed a fun diversion."

Liara slowly grinned. "I can understand." She walked over and, after a moment of hesitation, took a seat on the edge of the desk, facing Harper.

"So, did you come down here just to let me mess with angry-eyes over here," Harper nodded towards the guard, who kept up her glare "or did you have another reason?"

Before responding to Harper, Liara entered another rapid-fire conversation with the guard. After perhaps two lines each, the guard lowered her fist and worked her jaw, visibly trying to relax her posture. Turning back to face Harper, Liara said "Don't be too hard on Neyana. Her younger sister was badly wounded when they first tried to force their way aboard your crashed ship."

"Ah." Harper nodded slowly. Mulling over her thoughts for a second, she turned to face 'Neyana.' "My apologies, miss." Her voice darkened. "Many people lost friends down there. All cope differently."

Neyana did not respond, until Liara spoke another slow sentence in their Asari language. Finally, the guard managed to croak out "Apology accepted." A pause, and then came a gruff "Thank you."

Excellent. It was good if Harper could try to form some sort of connection with the aliens. Maybe they would let her talk to Williams, see how well he was recovering from his wounds? The medigel should have taken care of the structural damage from the shots, but the Human body needed time to heal from the shock and internal damage.

Turning back to Liara, she added "And you? Are you okay after the fighting?"

"I am…well. Actually, that's another thing I wanted to say: thank you for protecting me when your ship crashed."

"Ah, yes." Harper remembered reflexively shifting to push Liara into the corner of the cargo bay, and then covering the small alien with Harper's armored body. Really, the action was more reflex than anything, that and a drive to protect the only non-violent and talking alien prisoner they'd taken at the time.

But it wouldn't hurt to build some better reasoning for it. After a second of thought, Harper continued, "You reminded me of one of my older daughters. She was caught up in a fire-fight when she was three years old, and wasn't the same afterwards." Harper looked over the Asari, nodding. "You look around as old as she was, then."

"Oh. I, uh, I think we may be measuring 'years' very differently. I am seventy-four years old."

Harper felt her eyebrows shoot upwards in surprise. "Huh. That's more than three times me." She paused, thinking. "Here, what fraction of a year has it been since you marched me out of the _Defiant_?"

To her credit, Liara answered after only a few seconds of apparent confusion. "About four three-hundred-twenty-eighths."

After some quick calculations, Harper responded "So your year is around ninety-percent of ours. Wow." She looked back over Liara. "You look good for that sort of age."

"Ah…" Liara stammered, Harper noting with some amusement that the Asari's cheeks flushed purple. "Thanks?" She shook her head before continuing. "So that makes you…twenty-eight? And you already have at least one daughter?" Liara leaned in, head tilted to one side in what Harper assumed was curiosity. "What is the normal age of biological adulthood for Humans?"

"That's a complicated answer. For base-line Humans, generally somewhere between ten to thirteen years. Legally, it starts between fifteen to eighteen years, depending on the country."

Liara blinked several times. "That's so…young." Her brow furrowed, the unmarked fine scales there shifting. "Wait, 'baseline'?"

"I wondered if you'd caught that." Harper smiled. She had considered whether or not to describe how she was different from the other Human prisoners, but had decided that it may be worth it to make herself 'stand out.' She gestured to herself with one hand. "I am _not_ a baseline Human. I am a genetically-engineered member of the Unity, a group of artificially-improved Humans. Marking a particular age of 'biological adulthood' for such as me is…difficult. Our bodies do not actually do the work of creating children, but rather our minds. But at least 'societal' adulthood in the Unity starts between two to three years. I fathered my first daughters when I was four."

Liara's eyes shot open in surprise, as she leaned back against the wall behind her. "That's…wow. The Salarians have nothing on you." Her eyes shifted focus back to Harper after a second. "Also, 'fathered'? Not 'mothered'?"

"Unity bodies are grown, non-sentient, in tanks until their brains have matured enough to support a conscience. Then, they are 'imprinted' upon by the mind of a person who links with the system as the bodies are de-tanked. Those whose minds are awoken by the imprint become full Unity members, the daughters of the 'father' who gave them life."

There were several long seconds of silence before Liara responded. "Wow. That's _really_ weird. We don't have anything like that in Citadel space — too illegal." Her brow furrowed once more, and she asked "But what happens to—"

The guard interrupted the conversation with a quick sentence of the Asari language.

"Oh. Ah, right." Liara responded in Citadel Standard, pausing before continuing to talk to Harper. "Not that that isn't fascinating, but I do have a more important question."

"Go ahead." Harper nodded. She was rather interested to learn more about the 'illegal' aspect that Liara had hinted at, but the whole purpose of this conversation was to try to make herself seem friendlier to the Asari, so the question would have to wait.

"One of our people was badly wounded by an explosive — Ephea, Neyana's sister — and we don't have the medical supplies to treat her here. Back after the first fight" Harper's hearing managed to catch the microscopic hitch in the alien's voice at the word 'fight' "I saw you treating one of your wounded. He had been shot in the chest, and something you did healed him in minutes. Could you — would you — do that for Ephea, too?" The alien's next few words rushed out in a torrent "IfYouDon'tMindBecauseYou'reADoctorMaybeAndIt'sTheRightThingToDo."

Harper paused. Technically, giving non-emergency medical care to an enemy combatant _did_ fit the definition of 'treason' under both Alliance and Unity military conventions. But then again, it would endear her to the Asari, which would aid in her mission to gain both their trust and information. For that matter, if the Asari apparently believed that Harper was a medical technician, then that would give her a good reason to ask to see Williams, to 'make sure that he's recovering.'

Finally, she nodded. "I would certainly be willing to do so. It _is_ my duty to see that all those wounded in combat recover swiftly." She would ask about Williams later, once the 'moral inertia' of her helping the wounded alien had had time to build up.

Harper saw Liara's eyes light up in response, and held up a hand to stall the Asari, adding "But first, I need access to my kit. It was taken from me when I surrendered onboard the _Defiant_." The medigel was a slurry of nanomachines and bio-engineered 'blank slate' cells which took their shape and function from the surrounding natural cells. There was no mechanical reason why they shouldn't work with alien biology, simply replicating the patterns already present. "And second, I need to know how badly she is wounded. My medigel should be able to heal any injury short of major organ destruction."

Liara glanced to the guard, and the two passed a few sentences back-and-forth that remained irritatingly unintelligible to Harper. She'd see about fixing that later, too. The alien turned back to Harper. "That should be fine. Her injuries are mainly muscle and bone damage to the lower legs."

"Good. That should be very simple to treat." Harper swung her legs over the side of her bed, and made to stand up. "When do we start?"

* * *

After a quick discussion with Neyana, Liara walked side-by-side with Harper down the corridor. After the junior commando had cleared their idea with Shiala and Benezia, they had departed from the stateroom-turned-cell, moving towards the medical bay. One of the other commandos had gone off to retrieve Harper's gear from where it was held in the cargo bay of the diplomatic vessel.

Liara glanced to her left, looking over the Human. In her armor all those days ago, Harper had towered over Liara, seemingly large enough to bench-press a Krogan. Come to think of it, the Human had apparently won a fist-fight with Wrex during the confused melee in the stairwell at the start of this entire mess.

But now, wearing only her grey-and-white suit, Harper looked to be barely any taller than Liara was. It was hard to reconcile the glad-to-help woman walking beside her with the gruff, armored giant that had stomped around the battlefield in that damned hangar.

The small group came to a halt outside of the medical bay, where Sersha met them, the commando holding the same fabric pouch that Harper had described earlier. The Human grabbed the pouch and opened it, drawing out a palm-sized cylinder. She held it up to her face, squinting at the small display on the side of the opaque container. "Good, still some left. Should be enough to get the job done, but it might not work as fast."

"Oh?" Liara looked closer. The Human letters meant nothing to her, but the whole assembly still piqued her interest. "How exactly does it work, anyways?"

"It's mostly bio-engineered organic tissue by mass, stuff designed to be reshaped into about any form of organic life known to Mankind." Harper glanced up at Liara. "Should be able to adapt to working with alien tissue well enough, but it will throw an error and stop the process if it can't, so there shouldn't be any danger from mal-formed cells."

"'Throw an error?' That sounds more like a machine."

"Well, yes. The…" Harper trailed off, brow furrowed. Liara watched with curiosity as the small patches of hair above the Human's eyes emphasized the movement. She knew that the inked-in markings on her own face were an Asari fashion meant to mimic the narrow eyebrows of Quarians, but the Human equivalent seemed to be broader in shape.

Liara started as she realized that Harper was looking at her, curiosity etched on her face. "I'm sorry, I missed what you said there." No way on _Thessia_ was Liara going to admit that she'd been staring.

"Ah. I was saying that I don't actually know the right word in Citadel Standard. At any rate, the very-very-very-small machines in the medigel actually do the work of forming the new tissue into shape, reading the DNA of surrounding natural cells to get their instructions."

Liara, Neyana and Sersha glanced between each other, none of them needing to state what they were thinking.

Harper sighed. "Let me guess, something in that is _also_ illegal for you?"

"I don't know if _nanomachines_ — the small machines I think you were talking about — are exactly 'illegal,' but they're certainly restricted. It's more that combining that with bio-engineering — which is _definitely_ illegal — is…controversial."

Switching to Thessian Standard, Liara asked Neyana "What do you think? Ephea's your sister."

The guard eyed the container that Harper held. "It's not anything _I'd_ try, but really, the decision's up to Ephea." Nodding slowly, she added "I'd ask her before trying anything."

"Okay. Ah, it's probably best if you ask her."

"Agreed." Neyana walked over towards the airlock leading to the sealed environment of the medical bay, chuckling. "Either way, twenty credits says Reythe will _really_ be interested in the nanomachines."

Liara and Sersha snorted in response. "No bet." Commented Liara. "My budget's thin enough without losing twenty credits on a certain loss."

Still grinning, she turned back to Harper, and switched back to Citadel Standard. "We'll check with Ephea whether she wants to try it or not. Is that a common medical treatment for Humans?"

"Sounds like a good idea. And no, it's mostly just the Unity who use medigel widely. Most non-Unity civilians, at least, prefer more standard nanomachine-only treatments. But those are much slower, not much faster than natural healing. However, for soldiers in an actual battlefield, I find that most soldiers are fine with anything that stops the pain and stops it _fast_."

"Makes sense to me." Commented Liara.

Just then, Liara's omni-tool lit up, acknowledging receipt of a message from Neyana. Reading it, Liara nodded. "Sounds like Ephea wants to try it." She looked up at Harper. "You're absolutely certain that it won't hurt her, right?"

The Human nodded. "Completely." She held up the medigel canister, pointing to a bright-red button near one end of the container. "Worst-case scenario, if anything happens then I press the emergency stop, and the nanomachines instantly disassemble themselves into harmless base elements. Just carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Without them, the base-biomatter is entirely inert, and can be removed without harming the patient."

"Interesting. Out of curiosity, could just anyone apply this 'medigel,' or is there some trick to it that requires training?"

"It works well enough for anyone, just stick the nozzle past the blood and hold down the 'apply' button. But even then, there's a trick to knowing just where to apply the medigel and in what amounts to make the healing proceed at the fastest pace." Harper paused, frowning briefly. "Again, I don't know enough about Asari physiology to really be able to judge that, now."

Harper paused for several seconds. Just as Liara was about to speak, the Human tapped the side of her head with the hand that wasn't holding the medigel canister and continued. "Normally, I could mind-link with the nanomachines and guide them to work even faster, but my transceiver's broken, so that's no good, either."

Liara and Sersha exchanged another glance. "Mind-link?" It seemed that every other sentence with this Human led to another one-word question from Liara.

"Yes. All Unity members have mind implants that let us link with many of the machines we design, to better control their use. It also lets us link minds with each other, speak directly between brains without the rest of the body slowing things down. It's also how we link with our daughters when they are 'born' to imprint them." She grinned at Liara. "I know that sounds a bit weird to most people, but it works for us. And no, I can't read _your_ mind; it doesn't work that way."

Liara was quiet for several seconds before responding. "That…does not sound as weird to me as you may think it does." Her mind was overflowing with even more questions — was there another species (well, sub-species, by the sound of it) in the universe for whom melding was normal, even if these Unity-Humans managed it with technology instead of biology? — but there were more pressing matters. She shook her head before responding "We should talk about that later. For now, let's see how your medigel works on Ephea."

Liara led Harper over to the med-bay entrance, Sersha following behind. The three of them walked into the airlock, the outer door hissing closed behind them. Grabbing two of the over-suits from the rack on the wall, Liara held one up to the Human. "This one looks to be your size."

Harper looked at the blue-white garment and laughed. "Bunny suits?"

"Bunny?" Liara cocked her head at the foreign term.

"Earth animal." Harper shook her head. "A 'bunny suit' is old slang for an over-garment that one wears to protect the environment from contamination." She grabbed the suit and began slipping it on over her own clothes. "Haven't seen one of these except in history lessons. Most everything that's environmentally-sealed these days uses a nanofilm to coat anyone entering the area, and intercept any contaminants that way."

"Ah." Liara responded, halfway through putting on her own 'bunny suit.' "Well, it seems that you Humans are more comfortable with such technologies than most are in Citadel space."

"Well, at least we're close enough to the same shape that this thing fits easily." Just as Harper was about to lower the suit's hood over her face, she added "Oh, one more thing."

Voice muffled by the hood over her head, Liara responded "Yes?"

"Once Ephea is recovering, may I inspect the wounded Humans as well? Their health _is_ my responsibility, and I suspect I'm the best-qualified person aboard this ship to check that they are recovering properly."

"I don't think that should be a problem. I'll clear it with the guards once we're done here."

The three people walked through the inner airlock door, their cushioned feet padding against the floor. As they walked over to the bed where Ephea lay, Harper commented "Huh. I thought you were in charge here."

"Really?" Liara glanced over, grinning at Harper through the clear face-plates of the suits' hoods. "Why?"

"Well, if you aren't the senior-most at seventy-four years old, then who _is_?"

Liara paused mid-stride, before laughing hard enough that her hood dislodged and shifted sideways slightly. Pushing it back into position, she responded between breaths "You're…a bit off. As it happens, I'm the _youngest_ Asari aboard."

Now it was Harper's turn to numbly respond "Really?"

"Really."

"Huh." Harper nodded slowly. "I think we _will_ want to talk more later. But for now…" the three stopped at the foot of Ephea's bed, Neyana standing next to her sister's head, holding her hand through the commando's own bunny suit. "…our patient."

Liara nodded, turning to meet the gazes of both Neyana and Ephea, in turn. "Are you certain that you want to try this?" Liara herself wanted to see how the process worked, and to learn more about the Humans. She more-than-suspected that Benezia had supported the idea more to get the apparent-leader of the Humans to socialize and open-up more, to make later negotiations easier.

But if Ephea or her sister objected, then Liara would absolutely hold off on the procedure.

Neyana looked down at Ephea, the two sisters looking at each other before nodding. The maiden laid out on the bed replied, her voice much clearer than when Liara had last tried talking to her several days ago. "If it gets me out of here faster, I'm all for it. They flushed the pain-meds out of me when you proposed this" she weakly waved to the four people standing over her "earlier, so the pain's coming back. But being only half-conscious from the pain meds isn't much better. I'd rather be rid of the whole mess."

Harper looked to Liara, who realized that the injured commando had reverted to her native Thessian Standard. "She said she wants to try it."

"Good." Harper looked down at the purple-stained wrappings around the maiden's legs, covering everything between her knees and her feet. She reached for the loose end of one bandage before asking "Should I be the one to remove this? I don't know the nerve-pattern of Asari feet well enough to properly minimize the pain."

Neyana walked up next to her, and began to remove the bandages. "I'll get these."

As the bloodstained bandages finally came free, Liara swallowed hard to quell the bile rising in her throat. Ephea's legs essentially _stopped_ just below the knee, only mangled flesh and specks of shattered bone linking the knees to the lumps of tendons and sinew that remained of the maiden's feet.

"Uhh…" drawled Harper. "This may be just on the limit of what medigel can fix in any short amount of time."

"Yeah." Responded Ephea, hissing at the air blowing softly over her wounds. "Still, the medical report says that I'm looking at several months of recovery at the least, so anything's better than that."

"Very well." Harper gingerly applying medigel over the Asari's wounds, the grey paste seeping into the torn flesh. After a minute of work, the Human straightened. "That's the last of it. Should take a few hours to fix what it can, but that won't be very much with what materials it has available." She held the medigel container up, examining it. "Definitely not enough to re-build more than around a quarter of the damaged volume. But…"

"But?" Asked Liara.

Harper gestured to Ephea's damaged legs. "It looks like most of the tissue and bone _mass_ is still present, just deformed. The medigel doesn't have enough innate supplies to re-construct her legs entirely, but the nanomachines _can_ be set to salvage materials from on-site."

"Wait, so it would take her legs apart for spare parts?"

"And then put them back together again."

The two of them looked over to Ephea, who glanced back, eyes wide. "I, uh, think that that might be a bit much."

The Human shrugged. "Patient's choice. Even as-is, you should heal several times faster than natural." She tossed the small medigel container to Neyana. "Keep this. If anything seems to go wrong, hit the red button on the end, and the nanomachines cease work immediately. Should be about a ten-meter range on the signal."

The two sisters looked back at her. "Thank you."

Nodding, Harper turned to Liara. "Now, may I perform my inspections of the rest of the wounded?"

* * *

A few minutes later, and the small group were walking further down the corridor outside of the medical bay, Harper being led to where at the very least Williams was being kept.

The Unity officer grinned to herself, careful to keep her exterior features motionless despite the spreading sense of self-satisfaction she felt. She'd not only managed to get out of her cell and form at least a limited map of the ship that she and the other prisoners were held on, but she had also gotten a few of their captors to hopefully hold a better view of Humanity. That could be useful, later.

And even in case it didn't, that was _military-grade_ Unity medigel that she had applied to the wounded Asari. The nanomachines would only turn _inert_ if ordered to halt, not disassemble themselves. Harper's own neural transceiver wasn't working well enough to potentially re-active the nanomachines at a later date, but she could cobble together a simple transmitter from some of the rest of her kit, if only she could get access to it.

Having one of their guards be susceptible to a sudden hijack of her own nervous system could _also_ be useful, depending on the plans that Harper and the Alliance soldiers decided on.

After all, the foremost duty of any POW was to escape.

* * *

AN1: One of the things that I just realized while writing this chapter is that several parallels can be drawn between two canon characters that I've never actually seen compared before: Liara and Jack Harper. Both were people who, at a young age, saw people they cared about killed by a combination of an evil Turian and Reaper technology.

Liara saw Benezia commit 'suicide by Shepard' to escape Indoctrination caused by Saren, while Harper saw his close friend Ben Hislop killed by the Reaper artifact from Shanxi, after being (presumably) repeatedly exposed to it on Desolas's orders.

Both Liara and Harper then see someone whom they love (Shepard for Liara, Eva Coré (implied) for Harper) killed, and eventually take steps to have that person brought 'back to life' in one way or the other. Liara hands Shepard over to Cerberus for the Lazarus project, while Harper presumably models the name & personality of the infiltrator-robot in ME3 (the one whose body EDI takes) after Eva.

Both Liara and Harper come to lead massive intelligence networks around the galaxy (Broker network versus Cerberus) to fight against the Reapers, both implied to have done so as a reaction to seeing their friends killed.

And both end up being targeted (with very different degrees of justification) by their species' governments. Aethyta manages to talk the Republics down from apparently ordering Liara's assassination, while Cerberus ends up being hunted by the Alliance (with much better justification, admittedly).

AN2: One of the other things I wanted to play with in this story was having a more _weird_ trans-Human faction. Plenty of other ME-fanfics on this site have interesting trans-Humans (usually AIs or extreme cyborgs), but they're generally shown as being still quite Human in terms of many societal factors (ages, family units, etc.). I wanted to have the Unity be, while still Human enough to be recognizable and fun to write, still _strange_ enough to stand out.

As it is, I've changed their 'age' norms (adulthood at a point where normal Humans are learning to walk and talk at the same time) to create a number of interesting angles that I want to explore later in the story. I mean, people 'born' into the Unity are popped out of a growth tank, and can walk and talk the instant that their body comes on-line. Does that sound like any other lovable young fellow we know from ME canon? Grunt's going to fit right in.

AN3: I'm also changing medigel slightly, both to fit my storyverse and to better explain how it works as it does in the games. I mean, in canon ME medigel is purely bio-engineered matter which acts only to hold wounded flesh together until it can be healed later, after the fight. However, in-game it acts as a magical healing salve that instantly restores HP in the field without any later healing required.

So in my story, medigel is a combination of biological and mechanical matter, with nanomachines that essentially look around them when inserted into a wound, and take 'instructions' from surrounding cells before building more of the flesh around them. I'll go ahead and hand-wave just how they know where to build different types of body-bits (say, different muscles) so someone doesn't end up as one solid-connected blob of tissue.

Also, I think this does a better job of explaining how medigel works on both organics and synthetics (it would be rather annoying if neither Legion nor EDI could be healed in-battle), and why it actually accomplishes healing the target instead of just being a super-effective band-aid.

AN4: I don't remember exactly if nano-machines are illegal or not in canon ME, so I kinda played them down the grey area in the middle here. I'm mostly paralleling current-day real-life opinions that I've seen towards such technology: "it's dangerous, creepy, and the subject of far too many horror movies & grim techno-thrillers (Michael Crichton's 'Prey', anyone?) to trust, but if it saves lives I'll tolerate it."

Heck, come to think of it, the modified medigel in my story is pretty much like the nanomachines from Crichton's 'Prey' (a novel that I greatly enjoyed reading as a kid), but beneficial instead of homicidal (I promise! Huehuehue), and without the explicit intelligence.

AN5: Oh, and yes, it's quite possible that _medical_ over-coats used for protection in a sterile environment have an entirely different nickname other than 'bunny suits.' But that's the term that's used for such clothing in a sterile machining-lab (like those used for assembling microchips and the like), so it's the one I'm most familiar with.

AN6: Also, woo! Longest chapter yet!


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